LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

Class 


MEMOIRS 


OP 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD. 

PRESIDENT  OF  COLUMBIA  COLLEGE. 
1SS&. 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

THE  material  for  these  Memoirs  was  collected  by  tlie  late 
Mrs.  Margaret  McMurray  Barnard,  and  has  been  arranged 
and  edited  in  accordance  with  her  wishes.  Her  sudden  death, 
when  no  more  than  two  chapters  had  been  written,  left  the 
editor  under  a  double  disadvantage,  since  many  interesting 
letters  and  other  documents  of  which  she  had  frequently 
spoken  could  not  be  found,  and  it  was  no  longer  possible 
for  him  to  confer  with  her  on  questions  of  detail.  He  has 
therefore  endeavored  to  make  such  use  of  the  material  at  his 
disposal  as  he  has  reason  to  believe  that  she  would  have  pre- 
ferred, treating  some  parts  of  the  subject  with  more  minute- 
ness than  his  own  judgment  might  have  commended,  but 
omitting  nothing  that  she  would  have  wished  to  be  expressed. 

Mrs.  Barnard's  wish  was  that  her  husband's  career  as  a 
great  educator  should  be  illustrated  as  largely  as  possible 
from  his  own  writings.  Hence,  a  large  part  of  the  volume 
will  be  found  to  consist  of  summaries  of  his  recorded  views 
and  condensed  extracts  from  his  published  and  unpublished 
works. 

The  brief  account  of  the  history  of  Columbia  College,  from 
its  incorporation  as  King's  College  in  1754  to  the  accession 
of  Dr.  Barnard  to  the  Presidency  in  1864,  has  been  consid- 
ered to  be  desirable,  because  it  shows  that,  from  the  first 
foundation  of  that  institution,  there  has  always  been  a  ten- 
dency to  reach  out  from  the  comparatively  limited  sphere  of 
a  college  of  liberal  arts  to  the  more  comprehensive  functions 
of  an  university,  and  because  it  was  Dr.  Barnard's  sympathy 

v 

226521 


Vi  PREFATORY  NOTE 

with  that  movement  which  made  his  election  as  President 
so  peculiarly  fortunate.  For  the  materials  of  this  sketch,  the 
editor  is  almost  wholly  indebted  to  Professor  Van  Amringe. 

It  was  no  part  of  Mrs.  Barnard's  desire  or  design  that 
these  Memoirs  should  include  a  history  of  Columbia  College 
under  Dr.  Barnard's  administration,  but  only  that  her  hus- 
band's views  and  efforts  during  that  most  important  period 
of  his  life  should  be  adequately  set  forth.  No  detailed  ac- 
count of  his  administration  has  been  attempted,  while  copi- 
ous but  condensed  extracts  have  been  made  from  his  reports 
to  the  Board  of  Trustees  and  from  other  documents,  in 
explanation  of  his  maturer  thoughts  on  the  whole  science  of 
education,  and  more  especially  on  college  government,  the 
elective  system  of  studies,  postgraduate  courses,  and  other 
measures  looking  to  the  growth  of  an  university  organization. 
To  these  have  been  added  extracts  from  many  papers  in  which 
he  advocated  the  higher  education  of  women,  with  particular 
reference  to  the  events  which  led  to  the  establishment  of 
Barnard  College. 

Notwithstanding  faults  of  matter  and  method  of  which  the 
editor  is  conscious,  and  other  faults  which  will  doubtless  be 
observed  by  the  reader,  it  may  be  hoped  that  these  Memoirs 
will  be  found  to  be  useful  as  a  contribution  to  the  educational 
history  of  this  country  during  the  nineteenth  century.  If 
they  shall  also  secure  to  the  memory  of  Dr.  Barnard  some 
part  of  the  appreciation  which  is  justly  due  to  him  as  one 
of  the  most  eminent  leaders  in  the  conservative  progress  of 
the  higher  education  during  that  period,  they  will  fulfil  the 
last  and  dearest  wish  of  the  loyal  and  devoted  woman  by 
whose  desire  they  have  been  compiled. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

PAQB 

Birth  and  descent  —  Sheffield  and  the  Valley  of  the  Housatonic  — 
A  New  England  village  at  the  beginning  of  the  century  —  The 
meeting-house  —  A  Puritan  Sabbath  —  Long  sermons  —  The  vil- 
lage choir  —  Innovations  —  A  new  meeting-house  —  Publishing 
the  bans  —  Barnard's  mother  —  The  village  school  —  Religious 
instructions  —  A  peculiar  grammar  school  —  A  bad  introduction 
to  the  classics  —  Desultory  reading  —  Mechanical  pursuits  — 
School  at  Saratoga  —  Barnard  learns  the  art  of  printing  .  .  1 


CHAPTER  II 

Stockbridge  Academy  and  preparation  for  college  —  The  influence 
of  "other  fellows"  —  Barnard's  schoolmates  —  His  mechanical 
pursuits  —  Introduction  to  natural  science  —  Juvenile  social 
science  —  Schoolboy  pranks  —  A  case  of  discipline  —  The  terrors 
of  proportion  —  Entrance  examination  at  Yale  —  Yale  in  1824 
to  1828  —  College  societies  —  Barnard's  contemporaries  —  Social 
influences  of  college  life  —  A  distinguished  career  and  a  good 
degree  —  Barnard  becomes  a  teacher  in  Hartford  Grammar 
School,  studies  French,  German,  Italian,  and  Spanish  —  Becomes 
attached  to  the  Episcopal  Church 22 


CHAPTER   HI 

Barnard  as  a  teacher  —  Enters  on  the  study  of  law  —  His  associate, 
William  Carter  —  Newspaper  controversies  —  Miss  Catherine 
Beecher  and  her  school  —  Fanny  Fern  as  a  girl  —  George  D. 
Prentice,  John  G.  Whittier,  and  The  New  England  Review  — 
Barnard  as  an  editor —  His  first  essay  in  authorship  — A  Fourth 
of  July  oration  —  Barnard's  hearing  impaired  —  His  early  lit- 
erary efforts  —  Park  Benjamin  —  Barnard  becomes  a  tutor  at 

Yale 41 

vii 


Viii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER    IV 

PAQK 

College  government  at  Yale  in  1830  — Morning  prayers —  A  case  of 
discipline  —  Increasing  deafness  —  Barnard  resigns  his  tutorship 
and  accepts  a  position  in  the  American  Institution  for  the  Deaf 
and  Dumb  at  Hartford  —  Theory  and  practice  of  deaf-mute  edu- 
cation—Julia  Brace— The  cholera  season  of  1832  — The  New 
York  Institution  for  the  Instruction  of  the  Deaf  and  Dumb  — 
Barnard  visits  New  York  —  A  city  of  desolation  —  New  York  as 
it  was  in  1832  —  Barnard  accepts  a  position  in  the  New  York 
Institution  —  A  congenial  faculty  —  Scientific  studies  —  The  star 
shower  of  1832  —  Barnard  is  confirmed  —  Meeting  with  Dr. 
Manly  of  Alabama  —  Professorship  of  Mathematics  and  Natural 
Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Alabama  accepted  ...  64 

CHAPTER  V 

Barnard  at  the  University  of  Alabama  —  His  varied  services  —  Fou- 
cault's  experiment  —  Becomes  Professor  of  Chemistry  —  Invents 
an  improvement  in  photography  —  Barnard  as  editor — An  edi- 
torial mystification  —  Magazine  literature  —  A  Masonic  oration 
— Appointed  astronomer  to  the  Boundary  Commission  of  Florida 
and  Alabama  —  Barnard's  marriage  —  A  fortunate  union  —  Bar- 
nard becomes  a  candidate  for  orders  —  His  service  to  the  tem- 
perance movement  —  A  noble  discourse  on  the  Union,  and  its 
effect 87 

CHAPTER  VI 

Oration  delivered  before  the  citizens  of  Tuskaloosa,  Alabama,  July 
4,1851 112 

CHAPTER  VII 

Barnard's  theological  studies  —  Disorders  in  the  University  of 
Alabama  —  A  senseless  attack  repelled  —  Letters  on  college  gov- 
ernment begun  —  The  Yale  statute  and  the  South  Carolina 
Exculpation  Law  —  Objections  to  both  —  Visitation  of  rooms  by 
professors  —  Espionage  —  Defence  of  the  Faculty  —  Government 
by  moral  influence — The  ideal  college  officer  described  —  Origin 
of  the  existing  college  system  —  English  colleges  of  the  olden 
time  — The  university  and  the  college  —  Unobserved  changes 
which  had  made  discipline  difficult  or  impossible  —  The  college 
community  —  The  old  system  of  government  impossible  —  The 
dormitory  system  condemned  —  Populous  towns  to  be  preferred 
to  country  places  for  college  establishments  .  .  141 


CONTENTS  IX 

CHAPTER  VIII 

PACK 

The  system  of  college  study  —  The  University  of  Virginia  and  its 
elective  plan  —  Defence  of  the  University  —  Objections  to  the 
Virginia  system  —  The  "open  system"  condemned  —  The  sig- 
nificance of  degrees  —  The  object  of  college  education  to  train 
the  mind  —  Objection  to  its  unpractical  character  considered  — 
The  overloading  of  the  college  course  in  compliance  with  popular 
demands  —  An  elective  group  of  studies  proposed  —  Barnard's 
election  to  the  chair  of  Mathematics  and  Natural  Philosophy  at 
the  University  of  Oxford,  Mississippi  —  His  ordination  and 
removal  to  Oxford  168 


CHAPTER   IX 

The  University  domain  at  Oxford  —  Barnard  accepts  pastoral  charge 
of  the  church  at  Oxford  —  Confusion  in  the  financial  affairs  of 
the  University  —  History  of  its  endowment  —  Barnard's  investi- 
gations—  Barnard  elected  to  succeed  President  Longstreet  — 
Discipline  improved  —  Powers  of  Faculty  enlarged  —  True  uni- 
versity organization  projected  —  Open  letter  to  the  Board  of 
Trustees  —  Plan  for  the  rearrangement  of  the  college  curriculum 
—  Post-graduate  schools  —  Recitations  and  lectures  —  A  noble 
appeal  for  the  higher  education  —  Astronomy  —  Its  practical 
utility  —  An  appeal  to  State  pride  —  In  what  the  greatness  of  a 
State  consists ,  197 


CHAPTER  X 

Effect  of  Barnard's  Letter  to  the  Trustees  —  Two  years  of  progress 

—  Barnard  and  the  University  of  the  South  —  Discouragement  — 
Report  to  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Science  on  the  Coast  Survey  of  the  United  States  —  The  astro- 
nomical observatory  and  its  telescope  —  A  petty  persecution  — 
A  case  of  discipline  —  Charges  against  Barnard  of  unsoundness 
on  the  slavery  question  —  His  defence  and  acquittal  —  Barnard's 
views  on  slavery  —  A  Union  man  at  the  South  —  Thanksgiving 
discourse  in  1856  —  A  letter  from  Jacob  Thompson  —  A  meeting 
with  Jefferson  Davis  —  The  astronomical  expedition  to  Labrador 

—  Barnard  is  elected  president  of  the  American  Association  for 

the  Advancement  of  Science  ....  ,    234 


x  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   XI 

PAGE 

Political  excitement  at  the  South  —  The  delusion  of  peaceful  separa- 
tion  Barnard's  views  expressed  in  letters  to  a  friend  —  The 

students  of  the  University  enlist  —  Barnard's  resignation  is  not 
accepted  —  Barnard  at  the  Convention  of  the  Southern  Dioceses 

Barnard's  resignation  accepted  —  Visits  military  schools  of 

South  Carolina  and  Virginia  —  Applies  to  Mr.  Davis  for  a  pass- 
port —  On  the  fall  of  Norfolk  Barnard  returns  to  the  North  — 
Contrast  between  the  North  and  the  South  —  Barnard  in  the 
Coast  Survey  Service — Letter  by  a  refugee  —  Treason  at  the 
North  following  the  tactics  of  treason  at  the  South  —  Earnest 
support  of  the  administration  —  Two  letters  from  General 
Sherman 271 


CHAPTER   XH 

A  sketch  of  the  history  of  Columbia  College  —  First  mention  in  the 
records  of  Trinity  Church,  New  York  —  Bishop  Berkeley  —  Lot- 
teries for  the  founding  of  a  college  —  Dr.  Johnson  appointed 
President —  First  matriculation  of  students  in  1754  —  The  Royal 
Charter  granted  —  Opposition  to  the  Charter — Trinity  Church 
conveys  land  to  the  corporation  of  King's  College  —  The  dread 
of  a  Church  establishment  —  The  College  seal  —  The  foundation 
stone  of  the  College  buildings  laid  —  First  Commencement  in 
1758  — Mr.  Cooper  elected  President  in  1763  —  Grant  of  land  in 
Gloucester  County  and  how  it  was  lost  —  A  grammar  school 
established  —  Foundation  of  the  New  York  Hospital  —  Condition 
of  the  College  in  1773  —  Political  controversies — Dr.  Cooper  sails 
for  England  —  Rev.  Benjamin  Moore  Praeses  pro  tempore — The 
College  buildings  occupied  by  troops  —  Suspension  of  the  College 
from  1776  to  1784  —  Organization  of  the  University  of  the  State 
of  New  York  —  Separate  organization  of  Columbia  College  — 
The  first  Trustees  —  Organization  of  the  Board  in  1787  — Dr.  W. 
S.  Johnson  chosen  President  —  The  faculties  of  Arts  and  of  Medi- 
cine —  Library  increased  —  College  faculty  enlarged  —  James 
Kent,  Professor  of  Law  —  Reduced  means  and  their  consequences 
—  Dr.  Wharton  of  Philadelphia  elected  President,  1801  — Bishop 
Moore  on  December  31st  of  the  same  year  appointed  to  the  same 
office  —  A  new  charter  obtained  in  1810  —  Bishop  Moore  resign- 
ing, Rev.  William  Harris  is  elected  President  and  Rev.  Dr.  John 
M.  Mason  Provost  in  1811  — The  Medical  School  is  incorporated 
with  the  College  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons  in  1813  — The 
Botanic  Gardens  granted  to  the  College  in  1814  —  History 
and  value  of  the  grant  — In  1816  Dr.  Mason  resigns,  and  the 


CONTENTS  XI 

PAQB 

provostship  is  abolished  —  Mr.  James  Kent  is  reappointed  Pro- 
fessor of  Law  and  delivers  lectures  which  were  afterwards  pub- 
lished as  commentaries  —  Grammar  school  established  —  Hon. 
"William  A.  Duer,  LL.D.,  succeeds  Dr.  Harris  as  President,  1829 
—  A  double  course  of  studies  introduced  in  1830  and  discontin- 
ued in  1843  —  Fiftieth  anniversary  celebrated  1837  —  Nathaniel 
F.  Moore,  LL.D.,  succeeds  President  Duer,  1842  —  The  study  of 
German  and  elocution  —  Charles  King,  Esq.,  LL.D.,  succeeds 
Dr.  Moore  as  President,  1849  —  Emeritus  professors — Plans  for 
a  system  of  post-graduate  instruction  —  The  College  removed  hi 
1857  to  the  buildings  formerly  occupied  by  the  New  York  Insti- 
tution for  the  Deaf  and  Dumb  —  Plans  for  parallel  course  of 
study  —  Establishment  of  the  Law  Schools  in  1858  —  A  School 
of  Mines  projected  in  1863  — Election  of  Dr.  Barnard  to  succeed 
President  King,  1864 301 


CHAPTER  XIII 

Dr.  Barnard  as  President  of  Columbia  College — His  efforts  in  behalf 
of  the  School  of  Mines  —  His  Inaugural  Address  on  the  relation 
of  physical  science  to  revealed  religion  —  Denies  a  conflict  be- 
tween science  and  religion  —  Opposition  of  religious  men  to  sci- 
ence—  Its  cause,  its  folly,  and  its»danger  —  Reasons  for  harmony 
between  them  —  The  light  of  science  is  a  light  of  revelation  — 
Contrast  between  science  and  philosophical  speculation  —  Miracle 

—  Superstition  —  The  Bible  not  a  book  of  science  —  Reasons 
why  it  could  not  be  so — Evolution  —  Theory  and  demonstration 

—  Representatives  of  religion  ought  to  study  science,  and  scien- 
tific men  ought  to  study  religion 


CHAPTER  XIV 

A  lack  of  incident  in  Dr.  Barnard's  later  life  —  Discouragements  of 
the  earlier  years  of  his  presidency  —  Discipline  —  The  responsi- 
bility of  students  —  Freedom  of  attendance  —  The  marking  sys- 
tem —  Oral  and  written  examinations  —  Grading  —  Honors  — 
Decrease  in  attendance  in  the  collegiate  department  —  Admis- 
sions without  examination  —  Visitation  of  affiliated  schools 


CHAPTER  XV 

A  change  of  views  on  the  subject  of  elective  studies  —  Modern  lan- 
guages —  Defects  of  the  American  college  system  —  Popular 
dissatisfaction  with  it  proved  by  statistics  —  Increase  of  interest 


i  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

in  scientific  studies  —  The  beginning  of  an  elective  system  advo- 
cated—  The  elective  system  again  pressed  —  The  old  theory  of 
the  college  curriculum  exclusively  for  mental  discipline  rejected 
—  The  revival  of  the  "double  course"  recommended  —  Success 
of  the  elective  system  reported,  and  its  extension  suggested  — 
The  elective  principle  advanced  as  the  key  which  solves  all  diffi- 
culties of  the  college  problem  —  The  elective  system  adopted  for 
the  Junior  and  Senior  years 379 


CHAPTER  XVI 

Dr.  Barnard's  change  of  view  on  the  elective  system  —  A  real  con- 
sistency underlying  it  —  Change  of  the  age  at  which  young  men 
enter  college  —  The  college  of  the  future  —  Graduate  fellows  as 
instructors — Expansion  of  the  college  into  a  university — The 
graduate  department — The  abandonment  of  the  undergraduate 
department  suggested  —  Opening  of  the  college  to  women  pro- 
posed—  Keasons  urged  in  behalf  of  the  measure  —  Movements 
for  the  higher  education  of  women  in  England  and  America  — 
Objections  to  it  answered  —  The  measure  again  urged — The 
Faculty  of  Columbia  ready  either  to  receive  young  women  as 
students  or  to  teach  them  in  an  annex — The  Harvard  Annex 
—  Barnard  College  established  in  connection  with  Columbia  — 
Table  of  attendance  in  Columbia  College,  and  its  associated 
schools  from  1865  to  the  close  of  President  Barnard's  adminis- 
tration in  1888 


CHAPTER  XVH 

Barnard's  early  education  and  its  defects  —  Education  a  science  and 
teaching  an  art  —  Who  should  teach  the  teachers  ?  —  A  depart- 
ment of  the  theory  and  practice  of  education  proposed  —  Euro- 
pean examples  —  General  defects  of  the  present  system  —  What 
a  true  education  would  be  —  An  ideal  school  .  424 


MEMOIES 

OF 

FKEDEKICK  A.   P.  BAENARD 

CHAPTER  I 

Birth  and  descent  —  Sheffield  and  the  Valley  of  the  Housatonic— A  New 
England  village  at  the  beginning  of  the  century  —  The  meeting-house 
—  A  Puritan  Sabbath  —  Long  sermons — The  village  choir  —  Innova- 
tions—  A  new  meeting-house  —  Publishing  the  bans  —  Barnard's 
mother  —  The  village  school  —  Religious  instructions  —  A  peculiar 
grammar  school  —  A  bad  introduction  to  the  classics  —  Desultory 
reading  —  Mechanical  pursuits  —  School  at  Saratoga  —  Barnard  learns 
the  art  of  printing. 

FREDERICK  AUGUSTUS  PORTER  BARNARD  was  born 
at  Sheffield,  Massachusetts,  May  5,  1809,  of  an  honorable 
ancestry  both  on  the  paternal  and  on  the  maternal  side. 
His  father,  Colonel  Robert  Foster  Barnard,  was  a  lawyer 
of  distinction,  and  several  times  represented  his  district 
in  the  senate  of  his  State.  He  was  a  lineal  descendant  in 
the  sixth  generation  from  Francis  Barnard  of  Coventry, 
Warwickshire,  England,  who  settled  at  Dorchester,  Mas- 
sachusetts, in  1636,  but  subsequently  removed  to  Hart- 
ford, Connecticut,  and  still  later  to  Hadley,  Massachusetts. 
The  wife  of  Colonel  Barnard  was  Augusta  Porter,  daugh- 
ter of  Dr.  Joshua  Porter,  a  physician  of  Salisbury,  Con- 
necticut, and  a  descendant  in  the  sixth  generation  from 
John  Porter  of  Warwickshire,  England,  who  migrated 


OF 


to  the  colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay  in  1626.  According 
to  tradition,  the  founder  of  the  Porter  family  was  Sir 
William  de  la  Grande,  a  follower  of  William  the  Con- 
queror ;  and  the  surname  of  Porter  is  said  to  have  been 
derived  from  a  son  of  Sir  William  who  held  the  office 
of  Grand  Porteur  at  the  court  of  King  Henry  I.  John 
Porter,  the  founder  of  the  American  branch  of  the  family, 
was  a  lineal  descendant  in  the  sixteenth  generation  from 
Sir  William  de  la  Grande. 

The  birthplace  of  Frederick  Barnard  was  in  the  beauti- 
ful valley  of  the  Housatonic,  surrounded  by  Greylock  on 
the  north,  by  the  western  spur  of  the  Green  Mountains 
on  the  east,  by  the  Dover  Hills  on  the  south,  and  by  the 
bold  Taughannock  range  on  the  west.  Hardly  anywhere 
could  a  greater  variety  or  a  more  pleasing  contrast  of  bold 
and  peaceful  scenery  be  found  than  in  and  around  that 
lovely  valley,  sheltered,  as  it  was,  by  picturesque  if  not 
majestic  hills,  watered  by  many  streams  and  deep  cold 
lakes, — all  teeming  with  trout,  which  have  long  since 
disappeared,  —  and  dotted  with  the  quiet  homes  and 
villages  of  a  hardy  and  enterprising  people.  Other 
noted' towns  in  the  near  neighborhood  of  Sheffield  were 
Williamstown,  Pittsfield,  Lenox,  Stockbridge,  Great  Bar- 
rington,  Salisbury,  and  Sharon  ;  and  it  is  no  insignificant 
indication  of  the  character  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  dis- 
trict that  each  of  those  towns  sent  from  one  to  five  students 
either  to  Yale  or  to  Williams  College  every  year.  The 
village  of  Sheffield,  as  it  was  in  those  days,  "  before  the 
aggressions  of  railways  had  broken  up  the  peaceful  quiet 
of  country  life,  and  converted  rural  districts  into  mere 
suburbs  of  the  great  towns,"  has  been  happily  described 
by  Dr.  Barnard  himself  in  an  autobiographical  sketch 
contributed  to  The  Forum  in  1886.  The  description  of 
a  typical  Massachusetts  village  at  the  beginning  of  the 


FREDERICK   A.    P.   BARNARD  3 

present  century,  as  it  appeared  in  the  memory  of  an  octo- 
genarian in  1886,  is  historically  as  well  as  biographically 
valuable,  and  may  properly  be  inserted  here  with  some 
very  slight  abbreviation. 

The  inhabitants  of  Pitcairn's  Island  [says  Dr.  Barnard] 
were  hardly  more  completely  isolated  from  the  great  world 
than  our  little  community.  Only  one  slight  link  attached  us 
to  outside  humanity  —  the  mail-wagon,  called  for  euphony's 
sake  "  the  stage,"  connecting  Albany  on  the  west  with  Hart- 
ford on  the  east,  which  passed  daily  through  the  village.  In 
my  later  boyhood,  when  this  ramshackle  old  vehicle  was  re- 
placed by  a  dashing,  yellow-painted,  four-horse  post-coach,  a 
galvanic  thrill  seemed  to  run  through  the  whole  sluggish  com- 
munity, and  it  was  felt  with  pride  that  we  were  rising  in  the 
world.  Afterward  the  startling  event  of  the  day  was  the 
flashing  transit  of  that  showy  visitor,  heralded  long  before 
its  arrival  by  the  tuneful  notes  of  the  coachman's  bugle  to 
which  it  was  my  daily  delight  to  listen. 

My  native  village  was  centrally  situated  in  a  township  of 
six  miles  square  which,  in  the  ecclesiastical  polity  of  early 
New  England,  had  been  constituted  a  single  parish,  subject  to 
a  pastor  of  the  dominant  Congregational  persuasion.  Our 
good  town's  people  would  have  repelled  with  scorn  the  appli- 
cation to  themselves  of  a  term  so  savoring  of  prelacy  as  "  par- 
ish." In  their  relations  to  the  Christian  world  they  described 
themselves  as  a  religious  "  society " ;  but  hateful  as  prelacy 
was  to  them,  their  reverential  awe  of  their  spiritual  guide 
seemed  to  indicate  that  they  could  be  brought  to  tolerate  the 
thing  more  easily  than  the  name. 

In  virtue  of  our  centrality  we  possessed  the  " meeting-house" 
—  the  word  "  Church  "  shared  with  "  parish  "  in  the  popular 
disesteem.  As  I  remember  it,  the  meeting-house  stood,  a 
dreary,  forlorn,  and  melancholy-looking  barn-like  wooden 
structure,  exactly  in  the  middle  of  the  road.  It  had  been 
erected  by  a  generation  which  regarded  "  steeple-houses "  as 
vanities,  and  decorative  architecture  as  positively  sinful. 
There  was  nothing  about  it,  therefore,  to  endanger  any  soul 
by  ministering  to  "  the  lust  of  the  eye."  The  interior  was  no 


4  MEMOIRS  OF 

less  gloomy  than  the  outward  aspect.  I  heard  it  often  spoken 
of  by  our  godly  pastor  in  the  pulpit  as  "the  very  gate  of 
heaven,"  and  though  I  shuddered  at  the  impious  thought,  I 
could  not  help  wondering  what  sort  of  a  place  heaven  must  be, 
if  the  meeting-house  was  its  gate.  It  was  furnished  with  old- 
fashioned  pews,  eight  or  ten  feet  square,  enclosed  by  partitions 
so  high  as  completely  to  conceal  the  occupants  from  their  neigh- 
bors ;  the  design  being  perhaps  to  prevent  untimely  criticisms 
of  bonnets  and  dresses,  or  to  guard  the  pious  meditations  of 
young  people  from  being  distracted  by  the  contemplation  of 
the  charms  of  the  opposite  sex.  The  figure  of  the  parson  in 
his  lofty  pulpit  could  be  discerned  only  by  those  of  his  hearers 
who  sat  on  the  further  side  of  the  pews  from  the  sacred  desk. 
The  pulpit  was  a  ponderous  and  clumsy  contrivance,  so  lofty 
as  to  put  the  preacher  on  a  level  with  his  hearers  in  the  spa- 
cious galleries  which  ran  around  three  sides  of  the  auditorium. 
It  was  approached  by  lofty  stairways,  one  on  each  side,  lead- 
ing to  massive  doors  which,  when  closed,  gave  it,  to  my  young 
eyes,  so  much  the  appearance  of  a  place  of  involuntary  con- 
finement that  my  earliest  and  long-continued  impression  was 
that  the  minister  was  shut  up  there  against  his  will,  and  that 
his  fervent  discourses,  which  I  did  not  in  the  least  understand, 
were  passionate  appeals  to  the  congregation  to  let  him  out. 
I  could  never  quite  make  out  how  it  happened  that  these  ap- 
peals, often  so  apparently  pathetic,  seemed  to  be  so  unavailing. 

Immediately  above  the  pulpit  was  an  approximately  hemi- 
spherical canopy,  the  nearest  approach  to  ornament  which  the 
edifice  had  to  boast,  but  which  was  too  hideous  in  appearance 
to  have  been  introduced  with  an  aesthetic  design.  In  popular 
parlance  it  was  called  the  "  sounding-board,"  to  which  purpose 
its  flat  under-surface  may  perhaps  have  adapted  it. 

In  the  pews  the  sexes  sat  promiscuously ;  but  as  the  occu- 
pants of  each  pew  were  usually  members  of  the  same  family, 
that  arrangement  was  regarded  there  as  innocuous.  In  the 
galleries,  however,  which  were  occupied  by  persons  for  whom 
there  was  no  room  in  the  family  pews  below,  and  by  the  un- 
fortunate class  of  extra-familiated  persons  who  are  always 
numerous  in  every  community,  there  was  a  "  man's  side  "  and 
a  "woman's  side,"  the  dividing  line  between  them  being  di- 


FREDERICK   A.   P.   BARNARD  5 

rectly  opposite  to  the  pulpit.  This  was  an  effectual  safeguard 
against  the  dangers  of  personal  proximity ;  but  it  afforded  to 
the  undevout  the  incidental  advantage  of  being  able  to  contem- 
plate each  other's  features  from  a  favorable  point  of  view. 

During  my  early  boyhood  it  was  one  of  the  most  earnest  of 
my  ambitions  to  be  permitted  "  to  sit  up  gallery  "  ;  but  this  was 
an  aspiration  which  my  father  did  not  regard  with  favor,  and 
which  was  rarely  gratified.  I  felt  this  privation  the  more 
severely  because  the  boys  of  my  own  age  with  whom  I  most 
constantly  associated  were  not  generally  subject  to  a  similar 
restraint ;  and  it  grieved  my  soul  to  see  them  in  the  weekly 
enjoyment  of  a  privilege  which  was  denied  to  me ;  but  there 
were  times  when  the  presence  of  "company"  or  some  other 
cause  dislodged  me  from  the  family  pew,  and  then  the  freedom 
of  the  gallery  was  open  to  me  as  to  others.  It  is  possible  that 
I  enjoyed  these  opportunities  the  more  because  of  their  rare 
occurrence.  There  were  two  reasons  which  made  a  seat  in  the 
gallery  —  I  will  not  say  pleasant,  for  no  part  of  the  church 
was  pleasant  —  but  less  wearisome  to  me  than  on  the  floor. 
The  first  was  that  it  afforded  me  the  companionship  of  other 
sufferers  who  shared  my  feelings,  and  with  whom  I  could  engage 
in  a  cautiously  conducted  intercommunication  which  enabled  us 
to  while  away  the  tedious  minutes.  In  our  interchange  of 
thought,  however,  there  was  need  of  great  circumspection ;  for 
there  was  a  formidable  functionary,  elected  on  every  "  town- 
meeting  day  "  and  called  a  tithing-man,  whose  duty  it  was  to 
look  after  the  good  order  of  public  worship ;  and  the  vigilant 
eye  of  that  dreaded  functionary  was  sure  to  detect,  and  his 
stern  rebuke  was  not  less  sure  to  check  with  prompt  severity, 
the  slightest  overt  act  of  young  or  old  resembling  irreverence. 
The  tithing-man  was  always  a  "  professor  "  of  the  most  austere 
sort ;  and  I  remember  that  1  used  to  wonder  whether  he  did 
not  think  it  wicked  to  laugh  on  week-days  as  well  as  on  Sun- 
days, and  whether  he  did  not  regard  anything  pleasant  as 
necessarily  sinful. 

Another  circumstance  which  made  a  seat  in  the  gallery  de- 
sirable to  me  was  that  it  afforded  a  view  of  the  desk  on  which 
the  parson  laid  his  manuscript.  Our  clergyman's  sermons  were 
written  out  in  full,  each  of  them  forming  a  sort  of  libretto, 


6  MEMOIRS   OF 

and  as  lie  turned  the  leaves  in  the  progress  of  his  discourse, 
we  could  judge  approximately  how  much  of  it  there  was  yet  to 
come.  I  remember  the  wistful  anxiety  with  which  we  gallery 
urchins  used  to  watch  his  gradual  approach  to  the  last  page ; 
and  how,  when  the  last  leaf  was  turned,  we  almost  held  our 
breath  for  the  final  Amen.  I  remember,  too,  our  deep  dis- 
appointment when  we  saw  him  turn  his  libretto  over  and  begin 
again  on  the  first  leaf  —  originally  left  blank  —  with  "  a  few 
words  by  way  of  application  to  close  the  subject."  The  "few 
words  "  often  expanded  into  many,  until  it  seemed  as  if  the 
earnest  divine  were  going  to  add  a  second  sermon  to  the  first, 
and  then  our  hearts  sank  into  fathomless  despair. 

The  choir,  usually  spoken  of  as  "  the  singers,"  occupied  the 
front  seats  in  the  gallery,  the  "  men  singers  "  on  one  side,  and 
the  "women  singers"  on  the  other,  extending  in  long  rows 
from  the  leader,  who  stood  directly  opposite  the  pulpit,  around 
the  corners  of  the  gallery  on  both  sides.  They  stood  up  when 
they  sang;  the  congregation  remained  seated.  In  my  earlier 
recollection,  they  were  sustained  by  no  instrumental  accom- 
paniment, a  church  organ  being  regarded  as  little  better  than 
an  invention  of  the  devil ;  but  after  a  time  this  prejudice  was 
so  far  softened,  that  a  violoncello,  or,  as  it  was  called,  a  "  bass 
viol,"  was  somewhat  ungraciously  admitted  to  give  increased 
solemnity  to  the  deeper  tones.  In  order  to  "  set  the  pitch " 
the  leader  was  supplied  with  a  sort  of  wooden  whistle  called  a 
pitch-pipe,  having  the  external  appearance  of  a  small  psalm- 
book,  and  provided  with  a  sliding  stop  by  which  to  vary  the 
tone.  After  the  hymn  had  been  read  entirely  through  by  the 
minister,  this  important  functionary  rose,  audibly  announced 
the  melody,  gave  a  sound  on  his  pitch-pipe,  thus,  "  Bangor  — 
toot ! "  raised  his  right  arm  to  bring  the  singers  to  their  feet, 
and  then,  with  a  powerful  down-beat,  struck  the  leading  note 
which  the  rest  followed.  The  leader  usually  sang  the  air, 
though  that  was  properly  the  part  of  the  "  trebles,"  —  the  word 
soprano  was  unknown — but,  as  if  proud  to  show  his  versatility, 
he  often  passed  in  succession  to  the  other  parts. 

One  further  recollection  of  the  old  meeting-house  I  must  not 
omit.  The  time  arrived  at  length,  even  in  my  early  years, 
when  the  depressing  ugliness  of  the  homely  old  structure 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  7 

became  too  much,  for  a  generation  which,  while  still  firmly 
clinging  to  the  faith  of  the  fathers,  had  ceased  to  regard  the 
utter  mortification  of  natural  taste  as  absolutely  indispensable 
to  godliness.  In  the  minds  of  the  devout  there  was  a  gradual 
but  evident  softening  on  the  subject  of  steeples  ;  and  at  length, 
it  began  to  be  suggested  that  a  taper  spire,  pointing  to  heaven, 
might  not  be  an  inappropriate  emblem  of  the  pious  purposes  to 
which  the  sacred  edifice  was  devoted.  The  need  of  a  bell,  too, 
to  announce  the  hour  of  praise  to  distant  dwellers,  had  long 
been  felt ;  and  a  bell  implied  a  belfry,  which  was  half  way  to 
a  steeple.  These  ideas  gradually  worked  in  the  minds  of  the 
people  until  it  was  resolved  in  open  town  meeting  that  the 
meeting-house  should  have  a  steeple.  At  the  same  time  it  was 
suggested  by  some  progressive  reformers  that  the  situation  of 
the  structure  in  the  middle  of  the  street,  though  quite  con- 
sistent with,  the  spirit  of  reverence  which  regarded  it  as 
typifying  the  thought  which  should  be  always  central  and 
supreme  in  the  minds  of  men,  was  an  unnecessary  obstruction 
to  the  circulation  of  vehicles ;  and  it  was  consequently  resolved 
that  the  meeting-house  should  not  only  be  embellished  with  a 
spire,  but  should  also  be  removed  to  a  position  where  it  should 
dominate  the  highway  laterally.  The  spirit  of  improvement 
did  not  stop  there.  In  fact,  when  a  stagnant  people  is  once 
awakened  to  the  idea  of  change  as  a  possibility,  changes  for  the 
sake  of  change  will  not  be  slow  to  follow.  It  was  resolved  to 
reconstruct  the  whole  interior  of  the  building.  All  the  venerable 
square  pews  were  removed,  the  gallery  and  the  lumbering  old 
pulpit  were  torn  away,  and  nothing  was  left  but  an  empty  shell. 
Pews  in  the  modern  style  —  slips,  they  were  called  in  Shef- 
field —  in  which  all  the  hearers  faced  the  minister,  though 
preferable,  perhaps,  on  utilitarian  principles,  but  greatly  in- 
ferior in  apparent  dignity,  replaced  the  family  boxes  of  the 
fathers  ;  the  ponderous,  sombre-colored  columns  which  sustained 
the  gallery  gave  way  to  slender,  white-painted  pillars ;  and  a 
new  and  airy-looking  reading-desk,  approached  by  circular 
steps  with  a  light  hand-rail,  succeeded  the  venerable  pulpit. 
In  these  new  arrangements  there  was  a  manifest  effort  to  soften 
the  gloom  of  Sunday,  but  the  impressiveness  of  the  place  was 
lost,  and,  on  the  whole,  the  transformation  did  not  please  me. 


8  MEMOIRS   OF 

The  grand  operation  of  moving  the  meeting-house  to  its  new  site 
impressed  me  very  powerfully.  To  transfer  so  vast  a  structure 
to  a  distance  of  only  a  few  hundred  yards  seemed  to  me  a  truly 
Titanic  work ;  and  I  watched  it  from  day  to  day  with  eyes 
almost  of  incredulity.  The  difficulty  of  the  work  was  prob- 
ably magnified  in  my  mind  by  the  fact  that  it  surpassed  the 
power  of  our  local  mechanics ;  we  were  obliged  to  send  as  far 
as  Hudson,  twenty-eight  miles  distant  on  the  North  River,  to 
obtain  a  competent  engineer;  and  when  that  august  man  of 
science  arrived,  I  well  remember  the  mingled  feelings  of  awe 
and  admiration  with  which  we  boys  of  the  village  looked  upon 
him. 

The  addition  of  a  steeple  to  the  meeting-house  involved  the 
construction  also  of  a  kind  of  pronaos,  or  vestibule,  since  the 
old  framework  could  scarcely  be  trusted  to  bear  so  great  a 
weight.  This  vestibule,  in  the  half  hour  before  service,  became 
a  sort  of  loitering  place,  where  even  the  most  devout  were 
accustomed  to  linger  for  the  exchange  of  pious  greetings.  It 
served,  therefore,  as  a  convenient  place  for  the  posting  of 
public  notices  of  such  matters  as  were  not  out  of  harmony 
with  the  sacredness  of  the  edifice.  Here,  accordingly,  it  was 
customary  to  make  the  publication  required  by  the  laws  of 
the  State  of  Massachusetts  of  an  intention  of  marriage  enter- 
tained by  persons  in  the  township.  This  publication,  contrary 
to  the  usage  in  Great  Britain,  where  it  is  made  from  the  pul- 
pit, was  required  to  be  made  by  the  town  clerk.  For  many 
years  my  father  held  that  responsible  office,  and  discharged 
the  particular  duty  here  mentioned  by  affixing  a  bulletin  in 
a  conspicuous  position  on  the  wall  of  the  church  vestibule. 
In  order  that  the  people  might  have  ample  opportunity  to 
peruse  such  interesting  notices,  it  was  desirable  that  they 
should  be  posted  about  the  time  of  the  first  bell  —  say  about 
an  hour  before  service ;  and  my  father  used  often  to  entrust 
the  notices  to  me  with  instructions  to  affix  them  in  the  proper 
place.  I  well  remember  the  feeling  of  importance  with  which 
I  used  to  discharge  this  duty,  and  the  pride  of  office  I  felt 
when  I  saw  the  crowds  which  curiosity  drew  around  me  as  I 
entered  bearing  the  official  posters.  There  were  occasions  on 
which  I  did  more  than  post  the  notices;  I  prepared  them 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  9 

myself  when  the  absence  of  my  father  from  home  happened 
to  occur  just  as  some  ardent  couple  were  impatient  to  fulfil 
the  legal  formalities  necessary  to  permit  the  union  of  their 
hearts  and  fortunes  for  life.  In  such  cases  I  assumed  the  func- 
tion of  town  clerk  ad  interim,  wrote  the  bulletins,  signed  my 
father's  name  as  his  proxy,  and  thus  spared  the  waiting  lovers 
the  weariness  of  delay.  The  usual  mode  of  publishing  the 
banns,  of  marriage  was  that  which  has  been  just  described, 
but  it  was  optional  with  the  town  clerk  to  make  it  viva  voce, 
if  he  chose ;  and  as  a  single  publication  of  that  kind  sufficed, 
there  were  sensitive  people  who  preferred  so  expeditious  a 
mode  of  getting  through  with  a  disagreeable  formality  rather 
than  to  be  publicly  advertised  for  the  space  of  three  weeks. 
In  complying  with  the  wishes  of  such  persons  my  father 
used  to  seize  the  moment  when  the  services  were  concluded 
and  the  congregation  were  rising  from  their  seats ;  then,  rap- 
ping for  attention,  he  would  make  a  stentorian  outcry  of  the 
important  notification  with  which  he  was  officially  charged. 
It  happened  once,  when  I  was  acting  as  his  substitute,  that  I 
was  requested  to  publish  by  word  of  mouth,  and  not  by  posted 
bulletin.  It  seemed  to  me  a  terrible  thing  to  speak  out  loud 
before  such  a  multitude;  but  the  dignity  of  office  and  the 
sense  of  duty  sustained  me,  and  I  passed  through  the  ordeal 
without  discredit.  Only,  as  my  stature  was  small,  I  found  it 
necessary,  in  order  to  secure  attention,  to  mount  the  seat  of 
the  pew  where  I  stood  and  to  use  all  the  strength  of  my  lungs. 
When  the  ceremony  was  over,  I  had  the  satisfaction  of  know- 
ing that  the  parties  most  immediately  interested  had  been  well 
published. 

In  later  life  Dr.  Barnard  was  of  the  opinion  that  the 
most  powerful  educative  influences  in  a  child's  life  are 
those  by  which  he  is  surrounded  when  emerging  from 
infancy,  and  consequently  at  a  period  of  which  conscious 
memory  preserves  no  record.  Whatever  education,  in  any 
true  sense  of  the  word,  he  himself  had  received,  he  referred 
to  the  careful  training  of  his  mother,  chiefly  in  that  early 
period ;  and  although  he  remembered  nothing  of  its  proc- 


10  MEMOIRS  OP 

esses,  lie  believed  it  to  have  affected  his  moral  rather 
than  his  mental  development.  "  I  believe  [he  said]  that 
if  there  is  anything  good  in  me,  it  must  be  owing  to 
that  loving  maternal  solicitude  which  gently  swayed  me 
towards  the  right  at  a  time  when  the  bending  of  the  twig 
sufficed  to  give  its  permanent  inclination  to  the  full-grown 
tree."  Yet  his  recollection  of  events  occurring  in  his 
childhood  was  unusually  distinct.  Thus,  he  definitely 
remembered  being  taken  out  at  night  to  witness  an  astro- 
nomical event  which  occurred  during  his  second  year,  and 
he  also  remembered  the  style  of  the  "  dresses  of  printed 
muslin  cut  in  kilted  fashion"  which  he  wore  at  that  age. 
With  one  of  those  dresses  he  associated  what  must  have 
been  a  very  early  lesson  in  the  English  language. 

The  dress  [he  says]  was  one  I  particularly  admired;  and 
once,  on  having  been  arrayed  in  it  just  after  it  had  come  back 
fresh  from  the  laundry,  I  exclaimed,  "  0  mamma,  what  a  pretty 
new  dress  ! "  "  You  should  say  clean  dress,  my  child,  not  new," 
replied  my  mother.  The  correction  surprised  me ;  and  I  pon- 
dered long  on  the  distinction  between  clean  and  new. 

In  the  intellectual  sense  of  the  word,  Dr.  Barnard  hardly 
believed  that  he  had  ever  been  educated. 

If  by  education  is  meant  the  result  of  influences  exerted  by 
other  minds  acting  on  and  giving  shape  to  my  own,  I  should 
find  it  difficult  to  point  out  when,  where,  and  to  what  extent 
such  influences  have  produced  such  an  effect  on  me.  Not  that 
I  had  not  teachers  enough;  I  had  probably  more  than  my 
share;  but  their  personal  relations  to  me,  as  I  recall  them, 
seem  to  have  consisted  chiefly  in  "  setting  "  me  lessons,  in  lis- 
tening to  my  "  recitation,"  —  which  was  a  verbal  repetition  of 
the  text,  —  correcting  my  blunders  by  giving  me  the  right  word 
when  I  used  the  wrong  one,  and  telling  me  I  "  had  better  mind  " 
when  I  was  restless  or  disorderly. 


FEEDEEICK  A.  P.  BAENAED  11 

Under  such  teachers  his  mind  was  neither  nourished  nor 
stimulated.  He  was  taught  a  few  things  and  forced  to 
learn  other  things  in  an  uninteresting  mechanical  way; 
his  real  education  was  derived  from  the  spontaneous  exer- 
cise and  healthy  growth  of  his  unusual  natural  powers. 

He  had  the  good  fortune,  as  Dr.  Hale  puts  it,  to  be 
"  born  in  the  middle  of  a  family,"  his  only  brother,  John 
G.  Barnard,  afterwards  a  distinguished  general  officer  in 
the  Engineer  Corps  of  the  United  States  army,  being  some- 
what his  junior,  and  his  only  sister  Sarah,  who  afterwards 
married  the  Hon.  Augustus  Porter,  United  States  Senator 
from  Michigan,  being  his  senior  by  about  two  years.  In 
company  with  the  latter  he  was  sent  to  the  village  school 
soon  after  he  was  able  to  walk,  and  his  description  of  that 
institution  of  learning  is  well  worth  preserving. 

On  my  introduction  into  this  school,  not  being  in  the  least 
aware  what  I  was  sent  there  for,  I  was  a  good  deal  puzzled  by 
the  scene  presented  to  me.  From  end  to  end  of  the  room  on 
each  side  there  extended  a  long  desk  of  soft,  white,  unpainted 
pine,  that  on  the  left  being  embellished  with  curious  and  highly 
ingenious  carvings,  and  that  on  the  opposite  side  being  deco- 
rated with  numerous  pen-drawings  which  a  more  mature  critic 
might  have  assigned  to  the  Egyptian  school.  In  front  of  these 
desks  were  benches  or  forms  of  simple  construction,  consisting 
of  planks  of  some  thickness  supported  by  stout  wooden  pins 
driven  into  obliquely  bored  auger-holes  to  serve  as  legs.  Smaller 
forms  of  less  height  occupied  more  advanced  positions  in  the 
room.  These  were  for  the  little  pupils,  among  whom  I  was 
unceremoniously  set  down  —  those  next  the  desk  were  for  the 
"big  boys"  and  "big  girls,"  —  the  sexes  occupying  different 
sides  of  the  room.  Many  of  the  little  ones,  with  small  books 
in  their  hands,  were  rocking  themselves  to  and  fro,  and  rapidly 
moving  their  lips.  I  was  told  that  they  were  "  studying  their 
lessons,"  and  I  wondered  what  that  could  be. 

The  master,  for  it  was  a  "  man's  school,"  occupied  a  com- 
manding position  upon  a  slightly  raised  platform.  His  eye 


12  MEMOIRS   OF 

swept  frequently  over  his  little  realm,  and  I  observed  with 
amusement  that  the  boy  or  girl  on  whom  it  momentarily 
rested  became  instantly  absorbed  in  some  profoundly  inter- 
esting occupation  with  book  or  slate,  and  seemed  to  breathe 
a  deep  sigh  of  relief  when  the  formidable  eye  passed  on. 
Some  of  the  boys  at  the  desk,  when  thus  left  free  to  follow 
their  own  devices,  exchanged  whispered  communications,  ap- 
parently relating  to  strings,  pins,  and  certain  spherical  objects 
which  were  furtively  passed  from  hand  to  hand.  Others 
applied  themselves  to  improving  the  contour  of  their  desks 
with  knives  which  seemed  to  have  been  furnished,  not  only 
with  blades,  but  also  with  gimlets,  saws,  and  other  implements 
adapted  to  the  use  of  sculptors  in  wood,  and  it  soon  became 
evident  that  these  were  the  artists  to  whom  the  decorations  of 
the  desks  were  attributable.  The  girls,  on  their  part,  improved 
their  opportunities  of  perfecting  the  pictorial  decorations  of 
the  desks  on  their  side.  This  sort  of  by-play,  however,  in- 
terested and  puzzled  me  less  than  the  scholastic  exercises  of 
the  institution.  "  The  first  class  in  reading,"  "  the  second  class 
in  reading,"  "  the  first  class  in  spelling,"  "  the  second  class  in 
spelling,"  and  so  on,  were  successively  called  up,  and  a  horrible 
botch  they  made  of  it,  one  after  the  other.  I  could  not  under- 
stand what  they  stood  up  to  read  for,  nor  why  they  did  not 
read  after  they  stood  up.  I  could  read  before  I  went  to  school. 
How  it  happened  I  did  not  know.  I  supposed  it  was  natural 
to  do  so.  Probably  I  had  acquired  that  accomplishment  from 
the  same  source  from  which  I  derived  almost  everything  else 
in  me  that  is  good  —  if  there  is  any  such  thing  —  from  my 
mother's  careful  teaching.  There  came  a  time  when  I  had  to 
stand  up  myself  with  a  class  of  children  of  my  own  age.  I 
read  and  spelled  as  the  others  did ;  it  was  a  very  wearying  and 
meaningless  business,  and  I  found  school  life  very  trying.  As 
days  and  weeks  went  on,  I  learned  to  hate  it  intensely.  There 
was  but  one  pleasant  incident  in  the  oppressive  three-hours 
session.  It  was  when  the  glad  announcement  was  heard  from 
the  master's  lips,  "  The  boys  may  go  out."  Then,  for  ten  or 
fifteen  minutes,  there  followed  a  sense  of  exulting  freedom,  to 
which  nothing  in  later  life  could  be  compared. 

A  few  weeks  after  my  attendance  at  the  district  school  began, 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  13 

my  inadequate  appreciation  of  its  educational  advantages  was 
the  occasion  of  a  profound  mortification  to  my  loving  mother ; 
and,  through  her,  of  a  singular  feeling  of  perplexity  and  shame 
to  myself.  A  lady  visitor,  thinking  perhaps  to  gratify  a  par- 
ent's pride  by  noticing  her  offspring,  called  me  to  her  and  asked 
me  some  of  those  trivial  questions  which  strangers  usually  \ 
address  to  children.  Among  other  things  she  asked  me,  "  Do 
you  go  to  school  ?  "  I  answered,  "  I  do."  Then  she  asked, 
"  What  do  you  go  to  school  for  ?  "  I  replied  very  truthfully 
and  honestly  that  I  did  not  know.  "  0  my  child,"  exclaimed 
my  mother,  "  why  do  you  make  such  a  naughty  answer  ?  "  "  It 
is  not  naughty,"  I  insisted,  "I  don't  know."  "Oh,  now,"  she 
continued,  "  be  good,  and  tell  the  lady  that  you  go  to  learn  to 
read."  "  But  I  don't  learn  to  read  at  school,"  I  said ;  "  I  can 
read  better  than  any  of  the  children  now."  My  mother  gave 
it  up  as  a  helpless  case;  but  I  could  see  that  my  stupidity 
deeply  grieved  her,  and  I  was  deeply  grieved  myself  without 
knowing  why. 

Religious  instruction,  such  as  it  was,  formed  an  indis- 
pensable part  of  the  curriculum  of  a  New  England  village 
school. 

The  sensibilities  of  our  pious  villagers  had  never  been 
shocked  by  the  proposal  to  exclude  the  Bible  from  the  schools. 
Every  Saturday  morning  the  whole  school  was  called  up  to  "  say 
the  Catechism,"  meaning  the  Shorter  Catechism  of  the  West- 
minster Assembly.  On  one  occasion  an  answer  given  during 
this  exercise  created  a  sensation.  The  commandments  were 
the  subject  of  interrogation,  and  had  been  correctly  given  until 
it  came  to  one  of  the  larger  boys  to  answer  the  question, 
Which  is  the  ninth  commandment  ?  Whether  in  sheer  igno- 
rance, or  whether  he  was  instigated  by  the  total  depravity  that 
the  Catechism  told  us  was  inherent  in  us  all,  the  boy  replied 
in  a  confident  tone,  "  Thou  shalt  not  swear."  The  consequences 
of  his  indiscretion  were  somewhat  serious;  and,  some  hours 
later,  when  the  lad's  father  inspected  his  son's  back,  it  was  a 
prevalent  impression  that  he  grievously  violated  this  new 
commandment. 


14  MEMOIRS  OF 

It  cannot  be  said,  however,  that  Frederick  Barnard 
learned  nothing  at  the  district  school.  The  three  addi- 
tions to  his  knowledge  which  he  received  there,  and  of 
which  he  retained  a  grateful  recollection,  were  the  differ- 
ence between  his  right  hand  and  his  left,  the  mysteries 
of  the  game  of  "mumble  the  peg," — commonly  called 
mumblety-peg, —  and  the  charms  of  the  fair  sex  to  which 
he  ever  afterwards  continued  to  be  sensitive.  His  mention 
of  that  first  experience  of  the  tender  passion  is  extremely 
characteristic  : 

The  object  of  my  affection  was  very  pretty,  and  I  suppose 
that  was  why  I  loved  her ;  but  I  thought  I  loved  her  because 
she  was  a  pleasant  playmate.  The  persistency  with  which  I 
sought  her  society  did  not  fail  to  attract  the  notice  of  my  rude 
companions.  Possibly  they  were  envious,  —  I  will  not  impute 
motives,  —  but  I  know  that,  on  account  of  this  weakness  of 
mine,  they  held  me  up  to  merciless  derision,  and,  as  a  crowning 
insult,  called  me  "gal-boy."  In  the  fact  of  being  a  "gal-boy" 
I  could  see  nothing  discreditable ;  but  the  contemptuous  tone 
in  which  the  word  was  uttered  wounded  me  deeply. 

Thus  "lives  of  great  men  all  remind  us"  that  "the 
course  of  true  love  never  did  run  smooth!  " 

At  the  mature  age  of  four,  Frederick  was  sent  to  what 
was  called  a  grammar  school,  conducted  by  a  graduate  of 
Williams  College,  who,  in  later  life,  achieved  a  brilliant 
reputation  and  became  one  of  the  most  famous  preachers 
of  his  time,  the  Rev.  Orville  Dewey.  The  small  student 
was  not  required  to  study  set  lessons,  but  he  was  deeply 
interested  in  Mr.  Dewey's  lessons  on  geography.  For 
the  sake  of  illustration  the  teacher  used  a  wooden  ball, 
about  eight  inches  in  diameter,  on  which  he  had  traced 
the  equator,  the  tropics,  the  polar  circles,  and  the  ecliptic. 
Unfortunately,  however,  he  held  the  globe  by  a  rod  passing 
through  the  axis  and  projecting  some  inches  beyond  the 


FKEDEKICK  A.   P.   BAKNAKD  15 

places  which  represented  the  poles  of  the  earth,  and  when 
he  spoke  of  the  poles,  Frederick  naturally  inferred  that 
the  earth  must  have  similar  projections  on  a  larger  scale. 
From  this  bit  of  personal  experience  Dr.  Barnard  was  led 
to  think  "  that  illustration  by  design  and  model  is  not 
always  so  effectual  a  mode  of  conveying  knowledge  as  it 
is  generally  supposed  to  be." 

At  the  age  of  six  Frederick  was  promoted  to  the  study 
of  the  humanities  under  the  direction  of  the  village  parson, 
who  was  fain  to  eke  out  a  scanty  income  by  receiving  a 
limited  number  of  pupils.  Of  the  eight  or  ten  lads  who 
enjoyed  the  privilege  of  his  instructions  Frederick  was 
the  only  small  boy,  and  he  was  set  forthwith  to  study 
Adams'  Latin  Grammar  and  the  Colloquies  of  good  old 
Martin  Cordery.  The  methods  of  the  parson's  school 
were  somewhat  peculiar.  His  pupils  were  turned  loose 
together  in  a  large  room  to  prepare  their  lessons  for  the 
appointed  hour  of  recitation.  As  there  was  no  one  to 
look  after  them,  the  time  of  preparation  was  spent  in 
play  ;  and  as  the  reverend  tutor  was  far  from  strict  in  his 
requirements,  the  recitations  were  something  of  a  farce. 
Sometimes  it  happened  that  the  dominie  forgot  his  pupils 
altogether!  Naturally  enough,  the  progress  of  the  boys 
in  polite  learning  was  not  rapid,  and  after  a  time  Colonel 
Barnard  put  Frederick  under  the  instructions  of  a  young 
law  student  who  was  then  reading  in  his  office.  For  two 
trying  years  there  was  a  struggle  between  the  boy  and 
his  instructor,  the  boy  hating  the  very  sight  of  the  Latin 
grammar  and  determined  not  to  study  it ;  the  young 
man  equally  determined  that  he  should.  The  stronger 
will  prevailed,  and  the  end  was  that  Frederick  did  learn 
the  whole  grammar,  rules  and  exceptions,  Etymology, 
Syntax,  and  Prosody,  word  for  word,  by  heart,  but  without 
understanding  a  syllable  of  it  all.  Luckily  he  had  a  read- 


16  MEMOIRS  OF 

ing  book  —  Farrand's  Course  of  Latin  Study  —  which  has 
long  been  forgotten,  but  the  contents  of  which  interested 
his  mind  more  than  the  dry  if  elegantly  worded  Colloquies 
of  Martin  Cordery,  and  it  is  due  to  the  pleasure  with 
which  he  read  that  book  that  he  was  able  to  regard  the 
study  of  the  Latin  language  with  anything  but  disgust. 

Meanwhile,  his  mind  was  gaining  nourishment  else- 
where. He  was  a  voracious  reader.  The  juvenile  litera- 
ture of  that  time  was  scanty ;  but  at  least  he  read  it  all, 
from  Mother  Goose  to  The  Pilgrim's  Progress.  When 
he  was  only  six  years  old  his  father  wisely  put  Shake- 
speare into  his  hands,  and  even  then  he  was  able  to  enjoy 
the  Comedies,  though  the  Tragedies  and  Histories  were 
still  above  his  comprehension.  His  mother  introduced  him 
to  Cowper,  Burns,  Goldsmith,  Campbell,  and  other  poets, 
and  to  Addison,  Johnson,  Burke,  and  Robertson  among 
prose  writers.  He  pored  over  the  pages  of  Rollin,  but 
books  of  voyages  and  travels  were  his  special  delight. 
The  narrative  of  Professor  Silliman's  journeys  through 
England,  Scotland,  and  Holland  in  1806  took  so  strong  a 
hold  on  his  imagination  that  it  became  the  desire  of  his 
life  to  see  and  know  the  author.  He  trembled  at  the 
thought  that  before  he  should  be  ready  to  enter  Yale  the 
great  professor  might  have  passed  away ;  a  needless  fear, 
as  the  event  proved,  since  Professor  Silliman  survived  the 
graduation  of  his  young  admirer  by  more  than  six  and 
thirty  years.  Like  many  other  men  of  eminence,  Dr. 
Barnard  felt  in  after  years  that  he  owed  far  more  of  his 
intellectual  development  to  the  desultory  reading  of  his 
early  boyhood  than  to  all  the  misdirected  instructions 
of  his  teachers.  The  senseless  task  of  learning  the 
Latin  grammar  by  rote,  without  understanding  its  mean- 
ing, might  have  been  more  injurious  than  it  actually 
was,  but  for  his  promiscuous  reading  and  the  amusement 


FREDERICK  A.  P.   BARNARD  17 

which  he  sought  and  found  in  mechanical  contrivance. 
A  friendly  carpenter  allowed  him  the  freedom  of  his 
workshop  and  the  use  of  his  tools  ;  sometimes  the  good 
man's  indulgence  went  so  far  as  to  supply  him  with  mate- 
rials for  his  work.  It  was  a  proud  satisfaction  to  Fred- 
erick that  the  desk  at  which  he  sat  in  his  father's  office 
while  painfully  memorizing  the  Latin  grammar  was  of  his 
own  construction.  His  kites,  sleds,  barrows,  wind-mills, 
water-mills,  and  trip-hammers  were  the  envy  of  his  com- 
panions ;  but  notwithstanding  the  kindness  of  his  friend  the 
carpenter,  there  is  reason  to  fear  that  the  litter  he  made  at 
home  was  sometimes  the  despair  of  the  housemaid.  The 
faculties  of  contrivance  and  construction  which  were  thus 
brought  into  healthful  activity  were  destined  to  contrib- 
ute in  no  slight  degree  to  his  success  in  very  different 
pursuits. 

When  Frederick  was  about  nine  years  of  age,  he  went 
to  live  with  his  grandfather,  Dr.  Porter,  who  had  re- 
cently removed  to  the  village  of  Saratoga  Springs,  and 
there,  except  when  making  occasional  visits  to  his 
home  at  Sheffield,  he  remained  for  nearly  three  years 
in  attendance  at  a  school  of  some  pretensions,  called 
the  Saratoga  Academy.  At  that  school  he  first  began 
to  find  his  Latin  studies  endurable,  partly,  perhaps,  be- 
cause a  copy  of  Virgil  with  a  prose  translation  chanced 
to  fall  into  his  hands,  and  he  found  the  story  so  fascinat- 
ing that  he  read  it  entirely  through  before  he  had  com- 
pleted the  first  book  of  the  original.  While  at  Saratoga 
he  read  the  JEneid,  the  Georgics,  and  four  of  Cicero's 
Orations,  and  had  occasion  to  test  the  value  of  the  rule 
which  forbade  the  use  of  any  language  but  the  Latin 
in  communications  between  the  classical  scholars  and 
the  master.  He  found  that  his  intercourse  with  his 
superior  was  somewhat  restricted  in  range  and  some- 


18  MEMOIRS   OF 

what  meagre  in  the  extent  of  its  vocabulary,  but  on 
the  whole  he  believed  that  the  rule  was  not  without  its 
advantages.  It  was  at  Saratoga  that  he  began  the 
study  of  Greek,  and  he  used  afterwards  to  say  that 
he  found  that  study,  under  the  conditions  which  then 
existed,  to  be  "hardly  less  bewildering  than  the  navi- 
gation of  the  Sargasso  Sea  by  Christopher  Columbus." 
The  only  Greek  grammars  then  in  use  were  written 
in  Latin,  and  the  lexicon  in  general  use  was  the  Greek- 
Latin  lexicon  of  Schrevelius,  which  was  limited  in  its 
vocabulary,  and  badly  printed  besides.  The  first  Greek 
text  to  which  he  was  introduced  was  the  Gospel  of  St. 
John,  of  which  he  said  many  years  later  that  "for  sim- 
plicity of  style  and  freedom  from  embarrassing  idioms, 
he  considered  it  the  best  example  of  written  Greek  that 
could  be  put  into  the  hands  of  a  beginner."  From  St. 
John  he  was  advanced  to  the  Collectanea  Q-rceca  Minora, 
another  text-book  which  has  long  since  been  laid  on  the 
shelf,  greatly  to  the  loss,  as  Dr.  Barnard  thought,  of 
beginners  in  Greek.  Besides  his  studies  in  the  classics, 
he  became  proficient  in  geography  and  made  some  prog- 
ress in  map-drawing.  He  has  recorded  that  he  was 
deeply  impressed  by  the  knowledge  of  geometry  displayed 
by  his  professor's  ingenious  contrivances  —  which  the 
boy  did  not  in  the  least  understand  —  for  describing 
meridians  and  parallels  of  latitude  with  their  proper 
curvatures,  also  that  his  own  maps  were  much  com- 
mended by  partial  friends,  and  that  he  was  very  proud 
of  the  sinuosities  of  the  rivers,  which  looked  as  if  they 
might  have  been  drawn  from  nature,  but  which  were 
really  the  product  of  his  own  imagination. 

An  incident  of  his  life  at  Saratoga  was  his  learning 
the  printer's  trade  as  a  matter  of  boyish  amusement. 
His  own  account  of  it  may  be  given  at  length.  He  says: 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  19 

It  was  in  the  village  of  Saratoga  that  I  first  saw  a  printing 
office.  Nothing  had  ever  more  impressed  my  young  imagina- 
tion than  the  mysteries  of  the  typographical  art,  and  nothing 
ever  afforded  me  more  unalloyed  delight  than  the  opportunity 
I  now  enjoyed  to  fathom  these  mysteries.  I  soon  made  ac- 
quaintance with  all  the  printers,  and  was  indulged  in  my 
passionate  desire  to  be  taught  how  to  handle  the  "  stick." 
I  had  at  length  a  regular  "  case  "  assigned  me,  and  for  months 
I  devoted  to  it  all  my  hours  out  of  school.  I  learned  to  "  com- 
pose/' "  impose,"  "  correct,"  and  "  distribute  "  type,  became  in 
fact  familiar  with  all  branches  of  the  art,  except  the  working 
of  the  press,  to  which  my  strength  was  not  equal;  but  I 
learned  to  wield  the  "  balls  "  with  a  certain  dexterity.  It  is 
to  be  remembered  that  automatic  printing  was  then  unknown, 
and  that  even  the  ink-rollers  now  in  universal  use  had  not 
been  invented.  My  skill  thus  became  such  that,  had  I  at 
any  time  in  my  life  been  compelled  to  rely  for  subsistence 
on  the  labor  of  my  hands,  I  could  easily  have  earned  my 
living  as  a  practical  printer.  Many  years  later,  on  entering 
a  printer's  office  in  Tuskaloosa,  Alabama,  and  observing  a 
"  stickful "  of  "  matter  "  standing  by  itself  on  an  "  imposing- 
stone,"  the  spirit  of  the  craft  impelled  me  to  pick  it  up. 
Immediately  there  arose  a  loud  outcry  from  the  printers  in 
the  office,  who  expected  to  see  the  whole  tumbled  into  a  mass 
of  "  pi."  Setting  it  gently  down,  I  said  to  them,  "  Do  not  be 
concerned,  gentlemen ;  I  am  a  printer  myself."  I  was  always 
afterwards  a  great  favorite  in  that  office,  for  there  is  no  craft 
in  which  the  feeling  of  brotherhood  is  stronger  than  in  the 
printer's.  It  seems  to  me  that  my  voluntary  apprenticeship 
to  the  printer's  trade  was  by  no  means  an  unimportant  element 
of  my  education.  The  "  copy  "  which  I  "  set  up  "  embraced 
many  pages  of  instructive  matter,  and  the  hundreds  of 
"  takes  "  which  I  put  in  type  for  the  columns  of  The  Saratoga 
Sentinel  early  familiarized  me  with  politics  and  the  forms 
of  political  controversy.  But  a  principal  advantage  which  I 
derived  from  this  experience  was  the  confirmation  of  those 
habits  of  concentration  and  persevering  industry  to  which  I 
have  owed  whatever  of  success  may  have  attended  me  in  life. 
I  would  not  advise  every  father  who  destines  his  son  to  an 


20  MEMOIRS   OF 

intellectual  life  to  insist  on  his  making  himself  an  expert  in 
some  mechanical  art ;  but  if  the  boy  manifests  an  inclination 
to  do  so,  I  would  by  all  means  encourage  it ;  and  that,  if  for  no 
other  reason,  on  account  of  the  valuable  mental  discipline  it 
will  afford  him. 

To  the  close  of  his  life  Dr.  Barnard  cherished  pleasing 
recollections  of  the  years  he  spent  at  Saratoga  and  of  his 
young  companions  there.  He  regarded  the  influence  of 
companionship  as  one  of  the  strongest  educative  forces  to 
which  a  boy  or  a  young  man  can  be  subjected,  powerful 
for  good  or  evil  on  the  ethical  side,  and  so  powerfully  stim- 
ulative on  the  intellectual  side  "  that  a  lad  can  hardly  fail 
to  derive  benefit  from  attending  school,  though  he  should 
do  nothing  more  than  attend."  Of  his  Saratoga  school- 
mates some  were  unfortunate,  but  more  succeeded  in 
achieving  honorable  distinction  in  various  walks  of  life. 
One  was  for  years  the  most  famous  criminal  lawyer  at  the 
New  York  bar  ;  and  another,  whose  mental  and  moral 
qualities  won  for  him  young  Barnard's  cordial  admira- 
tion, was  afterwards  a  representative  in  Congress  from 
the  State  of  Louisiana.  Forty  years  later,  when  he 
met  the  latter  gentleman  once  more  in  the  village  of 
Saratoga,  he  asked  a  question  which  elicited  a  rather 
sagacious  reply.  "Why  is  it,"  inquired  Dr.  Barnard, 
"  that  the  people  of  South  Carolina,  who  forced  upon  us 
our  first  protective  tariff  in  1816,  are  now  such  bitter 
anti-protectionists?"  "However  you  may  account  for 
it,"  was  the  answer,  "you  will  find  it  to  be  invariably 
true  that  when  men's  interests  lie  in  a  given  direction, 
it  will  not  be  long  before  their  honest  conviction  will  lie 
in  the  same  direction.  The  interests  of  South  Carolina 
are  not  now  what  they  were  in  1816  !  " 

Two  letters  written  by  Frederick  have  been  preserved. 
The  first  was  addressed  to  his  father,  and  was  evidently 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  21 

intended  as  a  specimen  of  his  proficiency  in  English 
composition.  The  second,  in  a  freer  and  more  familiar 
style,  was  sent  at  the  age  of  thirteen  to  one  of  his  cousins, 
requesting  him  to  purchase  a  microscope  which  Frederick 
needed  "for  a  particular  purpose." 


22  MEMOIRS   OF 


CHAPTER  II 

Stockbridge  Academy  and  preparation  for  college  —  The  influence  of 
"other  fellows"  —  Barnard's  schoolmates  —  His  mechanical  pur- 
suits—  Introduction  to  natural  science  —  Juvenile  social  science  — 
Schoolboy  pranks  —  A  case  of  discipline  —  The  terrors  of  proportion 

—  Entrance  examination  at  Yale  — Yale  in  1824  to  1828  — College 
societies  —  Barnard's  contemporaries —  Social  influences  of  college  life 

—  A  distinguished  career  and  a  good  degree  —  Barnard  becomes  a 
teacher  in  Hartford  Grammar  School,  studies  French,  German,  Italian, 
and  Spanish  —  Becomes  attached  to  the  Episcopal  Church. 

AT  the  age  of  twelve  Frederick  was  sent  to  an  academy 
at  Stockbridge  to  prepare  for  Yale.  The  head  master  was 
a  Mr.  Jared  Curtis,  who  was  always  called  Major  Curtis, 
but  in  what  service  he  had  held  his  military  rank  Freder- 
ick never  learned.  The  school  work  at  Stockbridge  was 
less  instructive  than  at  Saratoga;  in  some  particulars  it 
seems  to  have  been  incredibly  defective.  Arithmetic  was 
wholly  neglected,  and  English  composition,  the  only  study 
of  which  Dr.  Barnard  seems  to  have  retained  any  strong 
recollection,  was  taught  in  a  way  which  he  did  not  hesitate 
to  call  detestable.  The  unlucky  boys  were  left  to  choose 
their  own  subjects  and  to  write  their  compositions  as 
best  they  might.  They  naturally  chose  the  most  ambitious 
themes,  and  treated  them  with  a  dreary  verbosity  which 
revealed  their  ignorance.  Dr.  Barnard  used  to  say  that 
teachers  who  follow  such  methods  "  ought  to  be  proceeded 
against  by  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to 
Children." 

Yet  the  years  spent  at  Stockbridge  were  rich  and  fruit- 
ful in  the  educational  development  of  Frederick  Barnard; 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  23 

for  there,  more  than  ever  before,  and  more  perhaps  than 
ever  afterwards,  he  was  stimulated  by  his  contact  with 
"  other  fellows  "  and  began  to  make  the  influence  of  his 
own  personality  felt  by  companions  of  no  mean  capacity. 
If  the  academy  at  Stockbridge  was  not  a  good  school,  it 
was  not  for  the  lack  of  good  materials  to  work  on.  Many 
of  the  pupils  became  distinguished  men.  When  young 
Barnard  went  there,  David  Dudley  Field  had  just  left; 
but  Timothy  and  Matthew  Field  were  there,  and  Cyrus 
and  Stephen  Field  followed  them  a  few  years  later. 
Among  his  other  contemporaries  were  Chester  Averil, 
who,  before  his  early  death,  became  a  brilliant  professor 
at  Union  College;  Ashley  Curtis,  an  eminent  mycologist, 
whose  life  was  spent  in  South  Carolina ;  William  Pitt 
Palmer,  a  poet  of  considerable  promise,  who  quenched  the 
spark  of  poesy  in  Wall  Street;  Theodore  Sedgwick,  grand- 
son of  Judge  Theodore  Sedgwick  of  Revolutionary  fame, 
and  himself  an  able  writer  on  law  and  literature,  who  was 
president  of  the  New  York  International  Exposition  of 
1853 ;  John  Henry  Hopkins,  a  well-known  engineer; 
Albert  Hopkins,  afterwards  professor  of  physics  at  Wil- 
liams College;  and  a  more  distinguished  brother  of  the 
last  named,  who  was  to  become  the  famous  college  presi- 
dent, Mark  Hopkins.  Of  all  these  it  was  a  significant 
fact  that  Mark  Hopkins  was  singled  out  as  the  natural 
but  friendly  rival  of  Frederick  Barnard.  After  nearly 
seventy  years  one  of  the  "Stockbridge  boys"  gave  this 
account  of  them: 

In  all  our  intellectual  contests,  debating  societies  and  spell- 
ing classes,  the  two  future  college  presidents,  Dr.  Hopkins 
and  Dr.  Barnard,  were  always  pitted  against  each  other  as 
leaders  of  the  contending  forces.  Our  contentions  were  vigo- 
rous and  earnest,  but  amiable  and  good  natured,  resulting  in  a 
pleasant  esprit  du  corps  among  the  boy  students.  The  two 


24  MEMOIRS   OF 

leaders  were  congenial  spirits ;  both  were  born  educators,  and 
they  were  pure  and  lovable  boys.  With  tine  physiques,  per- 
sonly  attractive,  amiable  in  temper,  genial  in  intercourse, 
refined  in  sentiment,  dignified  in  manner,  firm  in  their  con- 
victions of  right  and  duty,  and  unfaltering  in  the  pursuit  of 
high  ideals,  they  disarmed  envy  and  prejudice,  and  made  only 
friends.  Their  lives  were  pure  in  every  way.  They  indulged 
in  no  profane,  vulgar,  or  harsh  language ;  much  less  were  they 
guilty  of  any  low  or  unkind  conduct.  Tobacco  in  all  its  forms, 
they  eschewed  instinctively.  While  keenly  appreciating  wit 
and  humor,  and  both  relishing  and  telling  good  stories,  they 
had  no  tolerance  for  any  of  a  coarse  or  offensive  character. 
They  were  equally  intolerant  of  jokes  that  could  pain  or  mor- 
tify another.  They  saw  neither  humor  nor  smartness  in  crush- 
ing a  comrade's  hat  over  his  eyes,  or  throwing  his  cap  into  a 
puddle,  or  pulling  his  hair  "  on  the  sly,"  or  pinning  absurd  labels 
on  his  back.  If  he  was  weak  in  the  attic,  they  tried  to  help 
encourage  him ;  if  he  was  intrusive,  conceited,  or  overbearing, 
they  would  play  the  part  of  Socrates  with  him  and  lead  him 
into  some  intellectual  quagmire  from  which  he  could  escape 
only  by  admitting  that  he  did  not  know  everything. 

In  the  boyish  sports  and  simple  athletic  exercises  of  the 
lads  at  Stockbridge  Barnard  held  his  own  with  the  best, 
and  in  other  amusements  requiring  mechanical  ingenuity 
and  dexterity  in  construction  he  had  no  competitor.  It 
was  remarked  that  Barnard's  toy-pistol  shot  best,  and  that 
his  kites  flew  furthest.  The  pistol  was  entirely  of  his  own 
making.  The  barrel  was  a  short  piece  of  elder  with  the 
pith  punched  out  and  with  the  orifice  bored  a  little  larger; 
the  missile  was  an  arrow-like  rod,  with  the  feather-end 
projecting  somewhat  from  the  rear  of  the  barrel;  the  pro- 
jecting force  was  the  impulse  of  a  smart  spring,  made  from 
the  stem  of  the  mountain  ivy  and  attached  by  a  stock  to 
the  barrel  of  the  pistol.  The  kites  were  perfected  only 
after  long  and  patient  experiment.  It  was  found  that  a 
heavy  kite  could  not  fly  high.  It  was  also  found  that  a 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  25 

heavy  string  was  like  so  much  dead  weight  when  attached 
to  a  light  kite.  The  consequence  of  these  observations 
was  the  invention  of  a  "thread-kite,"  scarcely  twelve 
inches  in  length  by  eight  inches  across  the  bow,  which 
weighed  hardly  an  ounce  and  required  only  a  brown  thread 
for  a  string.  When  made  on  this  model,  the  kite  could 
be  sent  off  to  a  distance  of  more  than  a  mile;  but  it  was 
a  great  disappointment  to  Barnard  that  after  rising  to  a 
certain  considerable  height,  it  would  rise  no  higher,  but 
when  more  string  was  "  paid  out "  would  only  go  further 
off  horizontally.  For  that  undesirable  physical  fact  there 
appeared  to  be  no  remedy;  but  to  expedite  the  tedious 
process  of  winding  in  a  mile  of  thread  when  his  play  was 
over,  Barnard  invented  a  simple  apparatus  on  the  principle 
of  a  weaver's  "  quill- wheel,"  by  which  the  spool  was  made 
to  revolve  with  great  rapidity  by  means  of  a  driving-wheel 
and  band.  All  of  his  inventions  were  not  so  successful  as 
his  kites  and  pistols.  He  became  ambitious  to  construct 
a  balloon,  and  having  mastered  the  principles  of  the  thing, 
he  concluded  that  a  hog's  bladder  would  exactly  suit  his 
purpose.  Unfortunately,  he  neglected  to  compare  the 
weight  of  the  membrane  with  the  buoyant  power  of  the 
gas  with  which  it  was  to  be  filled,  and  when  his  balloon 
came  to  be  inflated,  it  was  found  to  have  only  one  defect 
—  it  would  not  rise. 

About  that  time  itinerant  lecturers  began  to  travel 
through  the  country,  discoursing  on  chemistry,  electric- 
ity, magnetism,  optics,  pneumatics,  and  astronomy, 
usually  illustrating  their  lectures  with  practical  experi- 
ments. One  of  these  lecturers,  Mr.  Josiah  Holbrook, 
well  known  as  an  educational  reformer,  visited  Stock- 
bridge.  His  apparatus  was  simple  and  his  experiments 
were  slight  enough,  but  such  as  they  were,  they  fascinated 
Frederick  Barnard.  The  glimpses  they  gave  him  of  the 


26  MEMOIRS   OF 

operation  of  the  natural  forces  roused  in  him  a  strong 
resolve  to  learn  more  and  inspired  him  with  an  ambition 
to  make  experiments  on  his  own  account.  By  dint  of 
much  labor,  and  by  converting  many  homely  utensils  to 
unaccustomed  uses,  he  contrived  to  supply  himself  with 
quite  an  array  of  scientific  apparatus,  and  soon  became 
an  amateur  lecturer  on  physics  to  his  wondering  school- 
mates. He  had  no  books ;  at  that  time  there  were  hardly 
any  school  books  on  such  subjects ;  but  at  length,  during 
one  of  his  vacations  at  home,  he  had  the  good  fortune  to 
light  on  a  small  text-book  belonging  to  his  sister,  entitled 
Blake's  First  Lessons  in  Natural  Philosophy.  He  read  it 
through  from  cover  to  cover,  almost  without  stopping  ; 
and  meagre  as  it  was,  it  contained  very  much  that  was 
new  to  him.  Best  of  all,  it  suggested  a  variety  of  ex- 
periments which  he  was  able  to  make  for  himself,  and 
which  he  did  make  with  infinite  satisfaction.  It  was 
out  of  his  own  experience  that  Dr.  Barnard  came  to 
the  conclusion  that,  in  the  education  of  children,  it  is  a 
fatal  mistake  to  substitute  the  study  of  words  for  the 
observation  of  things. 

It  has  always  seemed  to  me  [he  said]  to  be  the  great,  as  it 
is  the  almost  universal,  educational  mistake  of  our  time,  that 
children,  instead  of  being  introduced  to  subjects  which  address 
the  perceptive  faculties,  and  which  are  adapted  to  furnish  them 
with  a  flood  of  novel  and  clearly  comprehensible  ideas,  are 
usually  condemned  to  the  dreary  study  of  unintelligible  words, 
which  impose  a  heavy  burden  on  the  memory  and  are  only 
apprehended  after  the  understanding  has  become  matured  with 
advancing  years. 

His  new  acquirements  and  his  aptitude  as  a  "born 
teacher"  soon  made  young  Barnard's  "Evenings  at 
Home  "  both  instructive  and  entertaining  to  the  family 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  27 

circle.  Thus  Mr.  Holly,  the  friend  of  his  boyhood,  from 
whose  reminiscences  we  have  already  given  an  extract, 
records  that,  at  a  pleasant  gathering  of  young  people 
one  evening  at  Sheffield,  one  of  the  girls  proposed  to 
vary  the  amusement  with  lectures,  and  called  on  Bar- 
nard to  open  the  course.  He  at  once  complied,  and  seeing 
an  ornamental  pair  of  bellows  hanging  by  the  fireplace, 
he  took  up  the  bellows  and  delivered  a  discourse  on 
the  properties  of  air,  which  was  received  with  great  ap- 
plause. Song  and  other  music  followed,  and  he  was 
called  upon  to  deliver  a  second  lecture.  He  again  com- 
plied, and  took  for  his  theme  the  poetical  side  of  litera- 
ture, not  omitting,  however,  when  dealing  with  love  and 
moonshine,  to  give  some  account  of  astronomical  phe- 
nomena and  the  majestic  courses  of  the  stars. 

Barnard  was  not  idle  in  his  vacations  at  home  ;  but  he 
seems  to  have  been  occupied  with  things  rather  than  with 
books,  and  he  had  already  begun  to  ponder  the  social 
problems  in  which  he  never  ceased  to  take  an  interest. 
His  favorite  resort  was  the  famous  Salisbury  Iron  Works, 
where  he  watched  with  untiring  interest  the  whole  process 
of  melting  the  ore  and  moulding  the  metal. 

When  the  furnace  blew  out  [says  Mr.  Holly],  the  stack  con- 
tinued to  be  red  hot  for  several  weeks,  and  the  vapor  was  so 
dense  that  the  bottom  could  not  be  distinguished.  To  look 
down  into  it  was  like  peering  into  the  depths  of  Sheol.  Bar- 
nard happened  to  be  at  Salisbury  late  one  fall  soon  after  the 
furnace  blew  out.  In  an  afternoon  we  strayed  into  the  "  top 
house,"  and  after  taking  a  look  into  the  fiery  depths  we  found 
the  warmth  at  the  top  so  agreeable  and  the  gloaming  light  so 
genial  that  we  sat  down  on  two  inverted  boxes  and  soon  fell 
into  a  train  of  familiar  conversation  on  progress  and  reform. 
The  reforms  projected  by  our  youthful  imagination  were  of  the 
most  fundamental  and  comprehensive  character.  We  held 
that  every  child  born  into  the  world  is  entitled  to  a  living,  to 


28  MEMOIRS   OF 

care,  food,  raiment,  training,  and  education.  If  parents  failed 
to  supply  these,  the  State  ought  to  compel  them  to  do  their 
duty;  in  cases  of  orphanage  the  State  should  take  entire 
charge  of  the  children.  All  wrong  was  ultimately  to  be,  not 
righted,  but  prevented,  by  educating  the  minds,  the  souls,  and 
the  bodies  of  the  people,  so  that  no  one  should  wish  to  do 
wrong.  There  were  to  be  no  empty  stomachs  to  breed  anarchy 
or  agrarianism.  Time  was  to  be  fairly  divided  into  proper 
periods  for  education,  work,  rest,  and  recreation.  Honest 
work  was  to  be  rewarded  with  bread,  butter,  tea,  coffee,  sugar, 
milk,  and  money  enough  to  satisfy  the  reasonable  wants  of  a 
good  citizen.  Whoever  would  not  work  should  have  only 
bread  and  water.  Gardens  of  the  gods  were  to  be  as  plentiful 
as  potato  fields ;  the  streets  in  towns  and  villages  were  to  be 
bordered  with  trees,  shrubs,  and  flowers,  and  the  country  high- 
ways were  to  be  adorned  in  like  manner  with  fruit  trees  of 
divers  kinds  for  public  use.  Dancing  and  good  manners  should 
be  taught  in  all  schools,  and  music  should  be  encouraged  and 
sustained  at  public  expense.  Apothecaries  should  still  be 
required  to  label  poisonous  drugs  as  poisons  and  severely 
fined  for  any  injuries  that  might  be  caused  by  their  neglect ; 
but  the  State  should  accept  no  bribe  from  rumsellers  for  the 
privilege  of  selling  unlabelled  poisons  without  responsibility 
for  the  ruinous  evils  which  are  wrought  by  their  traffic.  Jails 
and  penitentiaries  were  to  be  few;  schoolhouses,  academies, 
and  churches  numerous.  The  poorest  human  habitation  should 
be  a  neat  and  commodious  cottage,  while  public  buildings 
should  surpass  in  beauty  and  grandeur  the  most  splendid 
architecture  of  all  previous  castles  of  Spain. 

These  were  dreams  of  boyhood,  visions  of  Utopia;  but 
they  were  at  least  dreams  of  such  a  boyhood  as  develops 
into  generous  manhood;  and  the  visions  of  a  far-off  or 
impossible  Utopia  were  at  least  prophetic  revelations  of 
the  strenuous  and  noble  life  that  had  begun  to  be. 

But  the  man  was  still  a  boy,  and  his  school  life,  blameless 
and  studious  as  it  was,  had  its  occasional  boyish  frolics,  as 
the  following  reminiscence  of  Mr.  Holly  testifies. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  29 

The  main  square  of  old  Stockbridge  [he  says]  was  called 
Academy  Square,  because  the  Academy  stood  at  its  northeast 
corner.  Diagonally  opposite  the  Academy  was  an  unusually 
large,  three-story  hostelry,  kept  by  a  kindly  Boniface  named 
Hicks,  with  stoops  on  the  two  streets,  which  afforded  a  central 
and  convenient  lounging-place  and  head-quarters  for  planning 
excursions.  Among  the  inn  refreshments  for  elderly  people 
were  "  slings  "  compounded  of  spirits,  sugar,  and  hot  or  cold 
water,  according  to  the  season,  and  spiced  with  grated  nutmeg. 
In  cold  weather,  a  toasted  cracker,  about  the  diameter  of  the 
top  of  the  tumbler  and  half  an  inch  thick,  was  added.  This 
was  called  a  "  toad."  A  milder  beverage  for  younger  people 
was  a  "  sangaree  "  prepared  in  the  same  way,  but  substituting 
wine  for  stronger  liquor.  One  pleasant  Saturday  afternoon  in 
the  autumn,  while  sunning  ourselves  on  the  south  stoop  and 
chatting  about  refreshments  for  a  proposed  picnic,  crackers 
were  mentioned  but  objected  to  because  they  were  such  dry 
and  thirsty  eating.  It  was  suggested  that  we  should  test  the 
matter  experimentally,  and  a  wager  was  laid  that  one  boy  could 
not  eat  six  crackers  while  another  boy  walked  around  the  square. 
The  two  champions  were  Fenn  —  years  later  Judge  Fenn  of  a 
Massachusetts  court  —  and  myself.  Fenn  undertook  the  walk, 
and  I  took  the  crackers.  Barnard  and  two  other  boys  were  to 
accompany  Fenn  to  see  that  he  did  not  run,  while  the  other 
boys  remained  with  me  to  see  that  there  should  be  no  surrepti- 
tious disposition  of  the  crackers.  Time  was  called  and  the  work 
began,  legs  against  jaws.  My  watchers  encouraged  me  by 
asking  occasionally,  if  I  would  like  a  little  fine  sand  sprinkled 
on  the  crackers,  or  a  few  choke-cherries  —  a  strong  astringent 
— to  eat  with  them.  The  boys  with  Fenn  did  him  the  like 
service  by  warning  him  not  to  swing  his  arms,  lest  he  should 
hit  somebody,  or  asking  if  he  would  like  a  few  baked  apple 
cores  along  the  walk  to  give  him  a  firm  footing.  Time  flew ; 
the  home  stretch  was  looked  for  with  intense  interest ;  the  last 
corner  was  turned;  Fenn  was  working  his  legs  for  all  that 
they  could  accomplish  while  I  was  crushing  between  my  palms 
the  remains  of  the  last  cracker ;  but  just  as  he  reached  the  last 
column  of  the  stoop  next  to  the  goal,  I  forced  down  the  last 
crumb  with  a  final  and  desperate  gulp,  winning,  not  by  a  neck, 


30  MEMOIRS   OF 

but  by  a  mouth,  and  of  course  the  Fenn  party  furnished  the 
"  sangaree."  Nearly  half  a  century  afterwards  I  accidentally 
met  Judge  Fenn  at  the  same  hostelry,  and  we  had  a  "  right 
gude  willie  waught  for  auld  lang  syne." 

Playful  as  he  was,  Barnard,  in  all  his  school  and  college 
career,  had  but  one  dispute  with  his  superiors,  and  that 
occurred  at  Stockbridge.  The  number  of  pupils  at  the 
Academy  had  increased  so  rapidly  that  Major  Curtis  was 
obliged  to  secure  the  aid  of  an  assistant,  a  gentleman  who 
was  still  alive  in  1885.  Dr.  Barnard  described  him  as, 
in  some  respects,  the  most  extraordinary  scholar  he  had 
ever  known.  In  the  class-room  he  never  took  a  book  in 
his  hand,  but  seemed  to  carry  the  whole  text  in  his  mind, 
quoting  sentences  at  length,  referring  to  particular  words, 
and  even  mentioning  their  places  on  the  page,  with  un- 
failing accuracy.  In  or  out  of  the  class-room,  if  he  was 
asked  a  question,  he  replied  without  hesitation,  never 
referring  to  grammar  or  dictionary  for  a  rule,  an  excep- 
tion, or  a  definition.  The  boys  regarded  him  as  a 
prodigy,  but  he  had  the  great  misfortune  to  be  deficient 
in  the  qualities  by  which  he  might  have  won  their  confi- 
dence and  affection.  In  discipline  he  was  something  of 
a  martinet,  and  he  soon  became  a  terror  to  every  young- 
ster in  the  school.  The  tutor  called  Barnard  to  account 
for  some  offence  which  he  considered  to  be  serious,  but 
which  Barnard  did  not  admit  to  have  been  an  offence. 
He  did  not  seem  to  be  disposed  to  resort  to  the  extreme 
measure  of  reporting  the  boy  to  Major  Curtis  for  punish- 
ment, and  offered  to  let  the  matter  drop,  if  Barnard 
would  make  a  suitable  apology.  The  boy  refused,  and 
chose  rather  to  submit  to  a  public  censure  in  the  presence 
of  the  whole  school.  He  felt  the  public  reprimand  keenly; 
but  he  did  not  believe  he  had  deserved  it,  and  he  would 
not  avert  his  punishment  by  making  an  insincere  apology. 


FREDERICK  A.  P.   BARNARD  31 

The  censure  pronounced  upon  him  he  considered  to  be 
merely  a  technical  disgrace,  and  in  bearing  it  he  had  the 
great  consolation  of  the  abounding  sympathies  of  his 
companions.  Everything  considered,  this  painful  ex- 
perience was  doubtless  salutary  in  its  effects,  by  draw- 
ing out  and  strengthening  that  principle  of  unfaltering 
and  uncompromising  self-respect  which,  in  after  life,  was 
so  remarkable  a  feature  of  Dr.  Barnard's  character. 

At  length  his  school  days  came  to  their  predestined 
close.  In  leaving  Stockbridge  young  Barnard  had  little 
to  regret,  except,  as  he  lamented  afterwards,  that  he  had 
not  availed  himself  of  certain  opportunities  of  learning 
Hebrew  and  Spanish,  and  that  his  efforts  to  acquire  the 
art  of  stenography  had  been  only  so  far  successful  as  to 
enable  him  to  write  mysterious-looking  characters  which 
he  could  not  read  a  few  hours  after  they  were  written. 
These,  however,  were  light  matters  which  the  dread  of 
his  approaching  examination  for  admission  to  Yale  cast 
completely  into  the  shade.  It  was  a  singular  fact  that 
since  he  left  the  village  school  of  Sheffield  he  had  paid 
not  the  least  attention  to  arithmetic,  and  arithmetic  was 
one  of  the  subjects  included  in  the  Yale  examination,  for 
which  he  was  otherwise  well  prepared.  On  reaching 
home  in  the  early  summer,  he  took  counsel  with  a  cousin 
who  was  then  just  out  of  his  sophomore  year  at  Yale,  and 
was  advised  to  devote  the  next  two  months  to  Webber's 
Arithmetic,  paying  particular  attention  to  the  doctrine 
of  Proportion.  His  diligence  was  quickened  by  his 
apprehensions,  for  in  those  days  the  usages  of  Yale  did 
not  allow  of  half-way  admission  to  college  "  on  condition." 
After  his  examination  a  boy  was  either  in  college  or  out 
of  it.  He  might  "scramble  through"  and  founder 
further  on ;  but  for  the  time  being  his  examination  was 
decisive,  so  that  unless  young  Barnard  could  pass  in  arith- 


32  MEMOIES  OF 

metic,  lie  had  no  right  to  expect  that  he  would  be  ad- 
mitted. It  may  be  well  to  say  here  that  after  all  his 
large  experience  as  a  professor  and  president  of  colleges, 
Dr.  Barnard  never  approved  of  half-way  admissions  to 
college  "on  conditions."  Happily,  he  found  the  text- 
book recommended  by  his  cousin  to  be  helpful  to  him, 
because  "it  told  the  why  of  things."  He  mastered  its 
contents  from  beginning  to  end  before  the  dreaded  exami- 
nation came  on,  and  it  was  to  that  time  that  he  referred 
his  first  taste  for  mathematics. 

His  account  of  the  examination  at  New  Haven  is  amus- 
ing. 

At  the  appropriate  time  I  went  to  New  Haven,  my  father 
accompanying  me.  Arithmetic  as  a  whole  no  longer  troubled 
me,  but  that  ominous  advice  about  Proportion  weighed  like  a 
ton  of  lead  upon  my  heart.  I  suspected  that  Proportion  was 
the  particular  club  with  which  it  was  customary  to  knock  too 
presumptuous  sub-Freshmen  on  the  head.  The  morning  after 
my  arrival  I  entered  upon  the  scene  of  my  anticipated  torture. 
Singularly  enough  there  is  extant  a  letter  in  which,  on  the  fol- 
lowing day,  I  gave  to  my  mother  a  full  account  of  the  proceed- 
ings. The  applicants  for  admission  were  divided  into  squads 
of  moderate  numbers  each.  Mine  consisted  of  eight  victims 
besides  myself.  The  examination  was  entirely  oral,  and  was 
completed  at  a  single  session.  One  officer  conducted  the 
examination  in  all  the  subjects,  while  another  sat  by  and 
looked  on.  My  examiner  was  Professor  Silliman,  who,  though 
Professor  of  Chemistry,  took  us  up  on  Virgil,  Cicero,  the  Greek 
Testament,  Graeca  Minora,  Xenophon,  Geography,  and  Arith- 
metic, all  apparently  with  equal  facility.  When  at  last  I  was 
called  up  on  Arithmetic,  the  subject  of  Proportion  projected 
itself  before  my  mental  vision  in  colossal  dimensions ;  I  felt 
quite  sure  that  I  should  mix  it  up  with  the  cube  root  and  cir- 
culating decimals ;  but  to  my  great  astonishment  and  relief,  this 
important  topic  seemed  to  slip  the  mind  of  my  examiner  alto- 
gether, and  after  asking  me  a  question  or  two  about  numerators 
and  denominators  and  ascertaining  my  general  notions  of  vul- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNAKD  33 

gar  fractions,  he  let  the  subject  drop  and  passed  on.  I  watched 
the  entire  examination  carefully  and  noted  with  surprise  that 
not  a  boy  was  asked  a  single  word  about  Proportion !  At  one 
time  during  the  proceedings  the  President  walked  into  the  room 
and  took  a  seat ;  but  he  made  no  remark,  and  though  he  looked 
dignified  and  grave,  I  could  not  but  think  that  he  looked  a 
little  bored  also.  When  the  whole  ceremony  was  over,  we 
were  requested  to  step  into  the  corridor  for  a  moment;  but 
after  a  brief  delay,  "  while  one  with  moderate  haste  might  tell 
an  hundred,"  we  were  recalled  and  informed  that  we  had  all 
been  admitted  to  the  freshman  class. 

Thus  Barnard  was  at  last  a  collegian,  and  his  career  at 
Yale  was  a  distinguished  one.  Though  he  was  the  young- 
est member  of  an  unusually  strong  class,  he  took  a  high 
stand  from  the  first.  Before  the  close  of  his  sophomore 
year  he  was  recognized  as  the  leader  of  the  whole  college 
in  Pure  Mathematics  and  the  exact  sciences.  At  his  grad- 
uation in  1828  he  stood  second  in  the  honor  list,  being  out- 
ranked only  by  Horace  Binney,  Jr.,  of  Philadelphia,  who 
excelled  him  in  the  classics.  His  diligence  and  good 
behavior  won  for  him  the  high  esteem  of  his  superiors, 
and  his  courtesy  and  geniality  made  him  popular  among 
his  fellow-students.  Few  incidents  of  his  college  life 
have  been  preserved  beyond  those  which  he  has  himself 
recorded  in  the  following  notes.  His  account  of  Yale 
College  as  it  was  in  1824-1828  will  be  interesting  to  all 
Yale  students,  and  his  observations  on  the  system  which 
was  then  established  there  cannot  fail  to  be  of  interest  to 
educators. 

The  two  or  three  years  [he  says]  that  followed  my  entrance 
into  college  were  years  of  earnest  and  persevering  labor ;  but 
although  I  was  apparently  surrounded  by  many  educational  in- 
fluences, and  enjoying,  or  supposed  to  enjoy,  the  instruction  of 
many  eminent  educators,  it  was  to  me  a  period  of  almost  literal 
self -education.  There  were  two  reasons  for  this :  The  first  is 


34  MEMOIRS   OF 

that  no  man  at  Yale  who  aspired  to  be  ranked  as  a  scholar  was 
permitted  by  public  opinion  to  obtain  any  assistance  from  any 
quarter  whatever,  even  from  his  immediate  tutor,  in  preparing 
himself  for  his  daily  scholastic  exercises.  He  must  stand  up 
boldly  before  his  class,  relying  on  his  own  resources  exclusively, 
and  "  take  his  chance."  If  he  acquitted  himself  well,  all  honor 
was  awarded  him;  if  he  "stuck"  or  "flunked,"  he  lost  caste 
in  proportion  to  the  gravity  of  the  case.  Scholastic  rank  in 
college  depended,  then,  as  literary  or  professional  rank  in  the 
world  depends  always,  upon  the  consensus  of  opinion  of  the 
community  which  sees  and  judges  it.  There  was  no  such  thing 
then  as  an  artificial  grade  founded  on  numerical  valuations  of 
particular  performances.  A  man's  superiority  was  acknowl- 
edged because  it  was  felt,  not  because  he  could  point  to  a  high 
"  mark  "  on  the  term  record.  Every  man  was  constrained  to 
show  what  he  was  capable  of  doing  without  help,  and  for  that 
reason  students  profited  little  from  the  aid  of  their  instructors 
in  meeting  current  difficulties.  As  a  partial  compensation,  it 
was  allowed  to  seek  such  aid  when  the  ordeal  had  been  met ; 
but  even  then  it  did  not  tend  to  exalt  the  reputation  of  a 
scholar  to  avail  himself  of  the  privilege. 

The  other  course,  which  seriously  limited  the  magnitude  of 
my  apparent  advantage,  was  that,  according  to  the  usages  then 
prevailing  at  Yale,  a  student  scarcely  came  into  mental  contact 
with  a  professor  before  his  senior  year.  In  the  junior  year,  it 
is  true,  there  were  lectures  from  the  Professors  of  Chemistry 
and  Physics ;  but  they  were  interjected  into  what  were  called 
the  "  study  hours,"  the  regular  periodical  exercises  of  the  day 
not  being  interrupted  on  account  of  them.  They  added  some- 
thing to  our  knowledge,  no  doubt,  but  their  proper  educational 
influence  was  slight.  Leaving  these  lectures  out  of  view,  the 
plan  of  operation  was  the  following :  Every  class  at  entrance 
was  broken  up  into  divisions  of  about  forty  students  each,  and 
the  tutor  assigned  to  each  division  remained  its  sole  instructor 
in  all  branches  of  study  whatsoever  to  the  end  of  the  junior 
year.  This  tradition  was  first  broken  in  the  third  year  of  my 
own  class,  when  Professor  Olmsted  [then  newly  appointed  to 
his  chair]  voluntarily  relieved  our  tutor  of  his  classes  in  me- 
chanics and  physics.  He  did  so,  as  he  told  me  himself  frankly, 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  35 

for  the  sake  of  getting  himself  up  afresh  in  those  subjects,  to 
which  he  had  paid  no  attention  while  filling  the  chair  of  Chem- 
istry and  Natural  History  in  the  University  of  North  Carolina. 
I  must  admit  that  the  Professor  of  Ancient  Languages  came 
into  the  class-room  once  or  twice  during  our  sophomore  year ; 
and  I  cannot  omit  to  mention  that  the  Professor  of  Oratory 
presided  when  we  "spoke"  in  our  turns  in  the  chapel  on 
"Wednesday  afternoons.  It  was  his  custom  to  hear  us  read  our 
"  pieces "  before  they  were  publicly  delivered,  and  he  usually 
made  a  few  remarks  on  the  merits  or  demerits  of  our  perform- 
ance when  we  had  left  the  rostrum.  The  only  one  of  his  critical 
observations  which  survives  in  my  memory  was  that  there  are 
only  five  words  in  the  English  language  in  which  it  is  permis- 
sible to  sound  the  termination  ed  as  a  separate  syllable,  viz. : 
blessed,  cursed,  learned,  striped,  and  streaked — a  limitation 
which  I  have  since  found  to  be  too  narrow. 

My  section,  or  "  division,"  as  it  was  called,  was  placed  at 
first  under  the  care  of  Mr.  Josiah  Brewer,  who  left  us  at  the 
end  of  the  first  year  to  devote  himself  to  a  missionary  life 
in  Syria.  He  was  succeeded  by  William  M.  Holland,  Esq., 
a  man  of  singular  ability,  afterwards  a  professor  in  Trinity 
College,  Hartford,  who  passed  away  in  the  prime  of  life.  To 
him  I  was  indebted  for  many  acts  of  kindness,  and  for  more 
useful  counsel  and  encouragement  in  my  educational  career 
than  to  any  other  of  my  instructors  except  Professor  Olmsted, 
who  treated  me  from  the  first  with  marked  interest  and,  indeed, 
almost  as  a  son.  The  President,  Dr.  Day,  was  a  man  of  gentle 
and  kindly  heart,  but  grave  in  aspect  and  rather  formal  in 
deportment;  and  although  he  was  regarded  by  the  students 
generally  with  affection,  it  was  rather  a  reverential  than  a 
glowing  affection.  During  our  senior  year  he  gave  us  instruc- 
tion in  psychology  and  in  political  economy,  and  without 
being  brilliant,  he  was  always  interesting.  Professor  Silliman 
was  universally  admired.  He  had  a  wonderful  command  of  lan- 
guage, and  in  his  unwritten  lectures  on  chemistry,  mineralogy, 
and  geology,  there  were  frequent  bursts  of  genuine  eloquence. 
Professor  Goodrich,  of  Oratory,  and  Professor  Kingsley,  of 
Ancient  Languages,  though  able  men,  left  but  slight  impression 
on  me.  These  gentlemen  were  all  the  instructors  then  holding 


36  MEMOIRS   OF 

rank  as  professors  in  Yale  College;  but  no  fewer  than  seven- 
teen tutors  held  office,  though  not  all  simultaneously,  during 
my  time.  Of  these,  five  subsequently  became  professors  in 
colleges  and  four  others  college  presidents.  The  most  dis- 
tinguished among  them  was  President  T.  D.  Woolsey,  who 
succeeded  Dr.  Day  at  Yale,  and  held  office  for  twenty-five 
years.  He  is  still  [1886],  after  fifteen  years  of  retirement,  in 
the  enjoyment  of  a  hale  and  honorable  old  age.  President 
Woolsey  was  one  of  the  tutors  of  my  class,  though  not  of 
my  division. 

As  I  look  back  upon  it,  no  part  of  my  training  at  Yale 
College  seems  to  me  to  have  been  more  beneficial  than  that 
which  I  derived  from  the  practice  of  writing  and  speaking  in 
the  literary  society  to  which  I  belonged.  The  general  literary 
societies,  open  to  students  of  all  the  classes,  and  numbering  one 
or  two  hundred  members  each,  were  maintained  at  that  time 
with  great  enthusiasm.  I  am  told  that  they  are  now  extinct  at 
New  Haven.  They  have  been  supplanted,  I  suppose,  by  the 
multiplicity  of  small  secret  associations  which  decorate  them- 
selves with  Greek-letter  titles,  but  which — if  they  are  literary 
at  all,  as  they  possibly  are,  though  I  doubt  it — can  never  furnish 
the  stimulus  of  a  large  audience.  I  can  only  regret  the  change. 
It  seems  to  me  that,  with  the  loss  of  her  literary  societies,  half 
the  glory  of  Yale  has  departed  from  her.  In  the  old  Linonia 
Hall  I  spent  many  of  the  most  profitable  hours  of  my  college 
life ;  and  I  heard  debates  there  which  for  interest  and  brilliancy 
were  equal  to  any  at  which  I  have  since  been  privileged  to  be 
present  in  assemblies  of  much  superior  dignity.  There  were 
some  men  of  my  time  who  made  no  very  serious  struggle  for 
grade  scholarship,  and  yet  would  sometimes  "come  out  strong" 
in  the  society.  For  the  sake  of  students  of  this  class,  who  will 
always  be  more  or  less  numerous  in  every  college,  I  should 
esteem  it  a  great  advantage  if  the  old  societies  could  be 
resuscitated. 

I  cannot  close  these  slight  reminiscences  of  my  college  life 
without  mentioning  a  few  of  my  classmates.  The  name  which 
stood,  in  alphabetic  order,  at  the  head  of  our  catalogue,  was 
that  of  Thomas  Gold  Alvord,  who  is  still  living  [1886]  in  honor- 
able retirement,  after  being  nine  times  elected  to  the  Assembly 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  37 

of  the  State  of  New  York.  He  was  twice  Speaker  of  the  As- 
sembly, and  for  one  term  he  presided  over  the  Senate  by  virtue 
of  his  office  as  Lieutenant-Governor.  Another  was  Christo- 
pher Morgan,  once  Secretary  of  State  of  the  State  of  New  York, 
and  member  of  Congress  from  Mr.  Seward's  district.  A  third 
was  W.  TV.  Hoppin,  afterwards  Governor  of  the  State  of  Rhode 
Island.  A  fourth  was  Oliver  E.  Daggett,  later  Professor  of 
Didactic  Theology  at  Yale.  A  fifth  was  Henry  N.  Day,  Pro- 
fessor of  Sacred  Rhetoric  and  Theology  in  Western  Reserve 
College.  Another  was  William  Strong,  who  has  served  as  an 
Associate  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States ; 
and  another  still  was  John  Van  Buren,  "  Prince  John,"  who 
was  certainly  one  of  the  most  effective  political  speakers  our 
country  has  ever  seen.  He  abounded  in  dry  humor.  On  one 
occasion,  replying  to  the  assertion  that  the  people  wanted  some- 
thing or  other,  he  inquired,  "  How  do  you  know  ?  I  am  one 
of  the  people  and  I  don't  want  it." 

As  to  the  social  influences  of  college  life  upon  those  who 
mingle  in  it,  I  have  a  word  to  say.  In  institutions  like  Yale, 
Harvard,  Princeton,  and  others,  where  large  numbers  of  young 
men  are  domiciled  together,  secluded  from  the  world,  screened 
from  the  eye  of  society,  subjected  to  a  merely  nominal  oversight 
by  the  academic  authorities,  and  wholly  unanswerable  to  munic- 
ipal surveillance  or  control,  the  influence  of  "the  other  fellows  " 
is  powerfully  effective  in  the  formation  of  personal  habits  and 
opinions,  and  consequently  in  the  moulding  of  character.  With 
all  restraint  practically  withdrawn  at  an  age  when  the  faculty 
of  self-control  is  still  feeble,  and  with  temptations  presenting 
themselves  in  the  most  fascinating  forms  on  every  side,  a  young 
man's  natural  love  of  pleasure  and  his  propensity  to  self-indul- 
gence do  not  need  the  stimulus  of  example  or  the  attraction  of 
companionship  to  make  them  dangerous.  But  in  a  body  of 
four  or  five  hundred  young  men  of  every  variety  of  social  con- 
dition, there  can  never  fail  to  be  some  who  are  fonder  of  amuse- 
ment than  of  study;  and  their  amusements  will  not  always 
be  innocent.  These  young  men  are  often  attractive  in  manner 
and  genial  in  disposition,  and  consequently  they  are  popular. 
Popularity  is  a  great  thing  in  college.  The  popular  man 
wields  an  influence  over  his  fellows  which  is  almost  unlimited, 


38  MEMOIRS   OF 

and  when  the  popular  man  is  also  a  vicious  man,  he  becomes  a 
fearful  agent  of  moral  contamination.  This  is  strong  language, 
but  it  is  justified  by  the  number  of  distressing  moral  wrecks 
which  fell  under  my  own  observation  during  my  college  life. 
The  greater  number  of  the  young  men  who  resort  to  cloistered 
colleges  no  doubt  escape  demoralization ;  but  of  those  who  do 
escape,  many  are  saved  only  "  so  as  by  fire " ;  and  there  is 
hardly  one  who  will  not  confess  that  the  tendency  to  vulgarity  in 
language  and  the  prevalent  contempt  for  the  conventional  pro- 
prieties of  life  have  often  been  such  as  to  shock  his  moral 
sense.  On  the  other  hand,  men  of  determined  will,  who  struggle 
successfully  against  all  this  and  succeed  in  keeping  themselves 
unspotted  from  the  grosser  world,  find  in  each  other's  society 
an  improving  and  educating  influence  of  the  highest  value ; 
and  of  all  the  benefits  derived  by  such  men  from  their  college 
experiences  none  are  remembered  with  keener  appreciation 
than  those  which  resulted  from  their  association  with  "the 
other  fellows." 

When  a  young  man  has  taken  his  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts, 
it  is  customary  to  say  of  him  that  he  has  "  completed  his  educa- 
tion." As  a  rule,  and  at  the  moment,  the  phrase  expresses  very 
well  his  own  opinion  of  himself.  But  in  so  far  as  education  con- 
sists in  the  acquisition  of  knowledge,  he  will  soon  find  himself 
to  have  been  deceived.  It  was  so  with  me.  In  my  under- 
graduate life  I  thought  rather  favorably  of  my  attainments. 
It  was  only  after  graduation  that  I  began  to  be  conscious  how 
little  I  knew.  XJomniencement  occurred  in  my  year  on  Wed- 
nesday, the  10th  of  September,  and  on  the  Monday  following 
I  entered  upon  office  as  a  teacher  in  the  Hartford  Grammar 
School — an  institution  in  which,  for  time  out  of  mind,  it  had 
been  customary  to  break  in  recent  Yale  graduates  for  service 
as  tutors  of  the  college.  As  it  was  my  purpose,  while  at 
Hartford,  to  prosecute  my  reading  in  physics  and  the  higher 
mathematics,  I  became  at  once  aware  that,  with  a  knowledge 
of  no  other  modern  language  than  my  own,  I  could  not  make  a 
single  step  of  satisfactory  progress.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I 
had  a  new  education  before  me,  in  which  I  must  begin  at  the 
beginning.  I  took  up  first  the  French  language,  and,  without 
a  teacher,  by  dint  of  hard  study  and  resolute  perseverance,  I 


FREDERICK  A.  P.   BARNARD  39 

fixed  in  my  memory  all  the  pronouns,  connectives,  and  irregu- 
lar verbs  contained  in  the  tables  of  Levizac  [the  grammar  then 
in  vogue],  after  which  I  learned  to  read  rapidly.  I  would  not 
venture  to  say  that  my  method  is  the  best.  It  is  not  Mr. 
Sauveur's,  I  believe ;  but  any  one  who  will  try  it  as  I  did,  will 
find  it  effectual.  The  successful  study  of  French  encouraged 
me  to  attack  German,  Italian,  and  Spanish  in  much  the  same 
way.  More  than  twenty  years  later,  when  a  translation  of 
Miss  Fredrika  Bremer's  Hemmen  i  Nya  Verlden  had  been 
published  in  the  United  States  —  in  which,  by  the  by,  the 
prudent  publisher  had  suppressed  everything  she  had  said,  and 
she  said  some  things  very  plainly,  about  the  "  peculiar  institu- 
tion" of  the  South  —  I  learned  the  Swedish  language,  only 
that  I  might  get  the  whole  story  in  the  original.  I  afterward 
extended  my  study  to  the  Danish. 

It  was  during  his  college  life  that  Barnard  first  became 
attached  to  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church.  The  Cal- 
vinistic  Congregationalism  in  which  he  had  been  reared 
had  never  won  his  personal  adhesion ;  but  it  had  inspired 
him  with  somewhat  vehement  prejudices  against  other 
forms  of  Christianity.  He  regarded  the  Episcopal  Church 
with  particular  aversion  on  account  of  its  liturgy,  its 
vestments,  and  even  the  use  of  the  organ  in  public 
worship.  It  happened,  however,  that  one  of  his  college 
friends  who  was  preparing  to  enter  the  Congregational 
ministry  was  a  devout  admirer  of  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer,  and  through  him  Barnard  was  induced  to  make 
a  study  of  the  Prayer  Book  which  ended  in  a  complete 
removal  of  his  prejudices  against  liturgical  worship. 
Another  friend,  a  devoted  churchman,  who  made  very 
little  pretension  to  personal  piety,  but  who  expected 
nevertheless  to  take  orders  as  soon  as  possible  after  his 
graduation,  was  a  strenuous  maintainer  of  the  peculiar 
claims  of  the  Episcopal  ministry  by  virtue  of  its  apostoli- 
cal succession.  He  urged  his  views  upon  Barnard,  and 


40  MEMOIRS  OP 

gave  him  several  such  works  as  Onderdonk's  Episcopacy 
Tested  ly  Scripture,  Law's  Letters  to  Bishop  Hoadly,  and 
Chapman's  famous  Sermons.  The  historical  argument, 
rather,  perhaps,  than  the  critical,  convinced  Barnard 
that  Episcopacy  was  either  of  direct  apostolical  institu- 
tion or  an  universal,  and  therefore  normal,  development 
of  the  ministry  established  by  the  Apostles  of  Christ. 
Accordingly,  he  wrote  with  many  misgivings  to  ask  his 
father's  permission  to  attend  the  Episcopal  Church  instead 
of  the  College  Chapel.  It  soon  appeared  that  his  appre- 
hensions had  been  groundless.  Colonel  Barnard  appears  to 
have  been  one  of  the  many  quiet  and  conscientious  people 
who  conformed  to  the  prevailing  type  of  Christianity 
and  did  nothing  to  discredit  it,  but  who  still  preferred 
the  older  customs  of  their  Mother  Church.  His  consent 
to  Frederick's  request  was  given  without  hesitation 
and  was  accompanied  with  a  frank  confession  that  he 
himself  would  have  been  glad,  if  it  had  been  possible, 
to  attend  the  Episcopal  Church  and  to  bring  up  his 
family  within  its  pale.  Thus  Frederick  became  an 
attendant  at  the  services  of  that  church,  but  he  was 
not  confirmed  for  several  years.  At  that  time  the 
Episcopal  Church  in  Connecticut  and  elsewhere  was 
strongly  leavened  with  Puritanism.  Confirmation,  and 
not  baptism,  was  generally  regarded  as  the  act  of 
"joining  the  church";  and  in  taking  that  grave  step 
the  candidate  was  understood  to  make  a  "profession 
of  religion"  rather  than  a  confession  of  faith  and  an 
acknowledgment  of  sacred  obligation.  Barnard,  as  ap- 
pears from  his  correspondence,  was  deeply  impressed 
with  the  importance  of  religion,  but  he  was  not  prepared 
to  make  any  profession  of  religious  attainment,  and  his 
confirmation  did  not  take  place  at  that  time. 


FBEDERICK  A,  P.  BARNABD  41 


CHAPTER  III 

Barnard  as  a  teacher  —  Enters  on  the  study  of  law  —  His  associate, 
William  Carter  —  Newspaper  controversies — Miss  Catherine  Beecher 
and  her  school  —  Fanny  Fern  as  a  girl  —  George  D.  Prentice,  John  G. 
Whittier,  and  The  New  England  Review  —  Barnard  as  an  editor  —  His 
first  essay  in  authorship  — A  Fourth  of  July  oration  —  Barnard's  hear- 
ing impaired  —  His  early  literary  efforts  —  Park  Benjamin  —  Barnard 
becomes  a  tutor  at  Yale. 

ON  September  15th,  1828,  Frederick  Barnard  began 
his  career  as  a  teacher  in  the  Hartford  Grammar  School, 
a  classical  school  which  had  long  served  the  double  pur- 
pose of  preparing  boys  for  college  and  of  exercising 
future  tutors  of  Yale  College  in  the  art  of  teaching. 
The  plan  of  the  school  had  recently  been  so  extended 
as  to  make  its  advantages  available  to  boys  who  were 
intended  for  business  life  as  well  as  for  lads  who  were 
to  enter  college.  Mr.  Barrows,  —  afterwards  the  Rev. 
Professor  Barrows,  —  a  graduate  of  two  years'  standing, 
had  chosen  to  retain  his  position  in  the  Grammar  School 
instead  of  returning  as  a  tutor  to  Yale,  and  by  virtue 
of  his  seniority  became  head  master.  He  was  a  man 
of  earnest  and  devoted  piety,  beloved  by  all  who  came 
into  contact  with  him,  and  distinguished  for  the  zealous 
energy  with  which  he  performed  the  duties  of  his  office. 
His  chief  assistants  were  Mr.  Barnard,  who  had  general 
charge  of  the  classes  in  mathematics,  and  Mr.  —  after- 
wards the  Rev.  —  William  Carter,  who  taught  the  classics. 
A  third  assistant  was  employed  to  teach  writing  and 
arithmetic.  Each  instructor  had  a  separate  room  in 
which  to  hear  the  recitations  of  his  classes,  and  in  each 


42  MBMOIKS   OF 

of  those  rooms  a  certain  number  of  pupils  had  their 
permanent  desks.  Among  those  who  were  thus  under 
Mr.  Barnard's  special  charge  were  two  lads  who  after- 
wards became  presidents  of  colleges. 

After  more  than  half  a  century  had  passed  away, 
Dr.  Barnard  could  not  forget  the  feeling  of  blank  dis- 
may with  which  he  faced  for  the  first  time  the  hand- 
ful of  small  boys  to  whom  he  now  stood  in  the  relation 
of  master. 

I  have  since  addressed  great  and  imposing  audiences  [he 
said]  such  as  legislative  bodies,  popular  assemblies,  religious 
organizations,  temperance  conventions,  scientific  associations 
and  meetings  of  all  sorts,  embracing  every  variety  of  age, 
intelligence,  and  culture;  but  I  have  never  felt  again  the 
inward  tremor  with  which  I  presented  myself  for  the  first 
time  before  the  squad  of  boys  who  were  waiting  to  greet  me 
in  the  Hartford  Grammar  School. 

He  had  the  instinctive  tact,  however,  to  make  his 
pupils  understand  that  he  felt  sincerely  interested  in 
them.  He  was  at  pains  to  catch  their  way  of  thinking, 
and  by  striving  to  sympathize  with  them  he  won  their 
sympathy  and  confidence.  He  joined  heartily,  and  yet 
with  no  loss  of  dignity,  in  their  sports,  and  in  the  hours 
of  study  the  boys  with  whom  he  had  been  playing  were 
easily  managed  by  a  master  who  had  won  their  good- 
will. There  is  no  doubt  that  he  made  a  singular  im- 
pression on  his  pupils.  One  of  them,  the  Rev.  Dr. 
A.  L.  Chapin,  President  of  Beloit  College,  Wisconsin, 
wrote  of  him  in  these  terms  in  1870 : 

Mr.  Barnard,  more  than  any  of  the  others,  impressed  the 
boys  with  a  sense  of  his  superiority.  Like  almost  all  men  of 
genius,  he  was  somewhat  variable  and  moody,  but  at  times 
brilliant.  Sometimes,  in  a  fit  of  abstraction,  he  would  sit  for 
half  an  hour  together  with  his  head  bowed  on  his  desk,  observ- 


FREDERICK  A.    P.   BARNARD  43 

ing  nothing  that  passed,  the  boys  meantime  being  restrained 
from  disorder  only  by  a  kind  of  unconscious  sympathy  with 
the  teacher's  mood.  Then  he  would  rally,  and  throw,  perhaps 
into  the  elocutionary  exercises  of  Porter's  Analysis,  a  glow  of 
life  that  thrilled  and  quickened  the  favored  class  assigned  to 
him,  and  especially  when  for  variety  of  illustration,  he  would 
give  a  reading  of  his  own  from  Shakespeare.  Some  passages 
from  The  Merchant  of  Venice  always  bring  him  before  me. 
Under  his  instructions,  too,  though  somewhat  outside  of  his 
regular  department,  the  Latin  of  Cicero's  De  Amicitia  or  of  the 
Agricola  of  Tacitus  was  clothed  with  a  charm  it  has  never  lost 
for  me. 

There  were  good  reasons  for  the  occasional  abstractions 
of  the  young  teacher.  In  the  second  year  of  his  service 
at  the  Grammar  School  there  fell  upon  him  the  first  gloom 
of  a  heavy  cloud,  to  be  mentioned  presently,  which  was 
to  shadow  his  whole  life ;  but  independently  of  that,  he 
was  by  habit  and  principle  an  ardent  student.  His 
delight  was  in  the  higher  mathematics,  and  in  order  to 
pursue  his  mathematical  studies  to  advantage  he  set 
himself  diligently  to  the  acquisition,  first  of  French,  and 
afterwards  of  German,  Spanish,  and  Italian.  At  the 
same  time  he  began  the  study  of  law  under  the  direction 
of  Jonathan  Edwards,  Esq.,  a  member  of  the  Hartford 
bar  with  whom  he  had  entered  himself  as  a  law  student. 
Law,  and  not  teaching,  was  the  profession  to  which  he 
expected  and  desired  to  devote  his  life ;  and  during  his 
first  year  at  the  Grammar  School  he  became  profoundly 
interested  in  Blackstone's  Commentaries.  Thus  mathe- 
matics, languages,  and  law  kept  him  constantly  engaged. 
On  his  desk  he  had  always  some  book  to  be  used  in  the 
intervals  between  the  recitations  of  his  classes  and  in  the 
tedious  hours  when  idle  lads  were  "kept  in"  after  school 
to  atone  for  sins  of  omission  or  commission  during  the 
day.  It  is  not  improbable  that  he  sometimes  uncon« 


44  MEMOIRS   OF 

sciously  lengthened  the  intervals  between  his  recitations, 
and  it  is  barely  possible  that  other  motives  than  the 
sympathy  mentioned  by  President  Chapin  may  have 
kept  the  boys  from  disturbing  the  brown  studies  of  their 
teacher. 

Mr.  Barnard's  relations  to  his  associates  in  the  Gram- 
mar School,  and  particularly  to  Mr.  Carter,  were  exceed- 
ingly happy.  Carter  had  been  a  classmate  and  an 
intimate  friend  of  his  in  college,  and  after  their  associa- 
tion at  Hartford  they  served  together  as  tutors  in  Yale. 
Their  friendship  was  founded  on  sincere  mutual  esteem 
and  lasted  all  their  lives.  Carter,  while  still  in  his 
sophomore  year  at  college,  had  become  deeply  religious 
and  had  devoted  himself  to  the  ministry.  He  was  a  man 
of  sternly  unbending  principle,  keenly  sensitive  to  injus- 
tice, and  always  ready  to  espouse  the  cause  of  the  op- 
pressed. During  the  popular  agitation  which  attended 
the  proposal  to  remove  the  Creek  and  Cherokee  nations 
from  the  lands  guaranteed  to  them  by  treaty  in  Georgia, 
he  was  roused  to  indignation  at  the  cruel  wrongs  of  the 
Indians  and  gave  utterance  to  his  sentiments  in  several 
scathing  articles  which  were  published  in  the  Hartford 
newspapers.  In  another  newspaper  controversy  Barnard 
and  Carter  were  engaged  on  the  same  side.  A  teacher 
in  a  neighboring  town  had  adopted  some  variation  of 
Locke's  method  of  teaching  languages,  using  a  classical 
text  with  a  literal  interlinear  translation,  and  discarding 
grammars  and  dictionaries.  To  say  the  least,  this  method, 
however  defective,  was  far  less  irrational  than  that  which 
Barnard  himself  had  been  doomed  to  follow  in  his  early 
classical  studies,  and  he  would  hardly  have  condemned  it 
outright  if  its  advocate  had  not  in  an  evil  hour  made 
open  war  on  the  method  pursued  at  the  Grammar  School. 
Unfortunately  for  himself,  the  impetuous  reformer  assailed 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  45 

the  Grammar  School  by  name  in  the  Hartford  newspapers, 
declaring  its  method  of  instruction  to  be  preposterous, 
and  announcing  himself  as  the  champion  of  a  system 
which  would  sweep  the  old-fashioned  system  from  the 
face  of  the  earth.  It  could  not  be  expected  that  young 
men  like  Carter  and  Barnard,  however  ready  they  might 
be  to  give  candid  consideration  to  a  proposed  improve- 
ment of  the  established  methods  of  instruction,  would  sit 
tamely  down  under  such  an  attack.  A  hot  and  rather 
wordy  newspaper  controversy  followed,  in  which  the 
champions  of  the  Grammar  School  turned  the  attack  on 
their  assailant.  It  may  be  admitted  that  there  was 
nothing  very  profound  in  their  arguments,  but  they  were 
at  least  too  strong  for  the  adversary,  and  at  nearly  eighty 
years  of  age  it  was  still  a  satisfaction  to  the  president  of 
Columbia  College  to  believe  that  he  and  Carter  had  "  beat 
the  enemy  out  of  his  boots  !  " 

The  following  paragraphs  from  one  of  Barnard's  con- 
tributions to  this  controversy  is  of  interest,  since  it  shows 
that  he  had  already  clearly  apprehended  the  true  nature 
and  value  of  education  as  a  training  of  the  mental  facul- 
ties, and  not  merely  nor  chiefly  as  the  acquisition  of 
knowledge : 

One  who  attempts  to  read  the  Latin  or  the  Greek  scientifi- 
cally is  engaged  every  moment  in  the  processes  of  analyzing, 
of  comparing,  of  reasoning,  and  of  judging.  By  practice  he 
learns  to  perform  these  operations  with  great  rapidity;  but 
even  the  most  perfect  scholar  can  perceive  them  going  for- 
ward in  his  mind.  He  is  conscious  of  a  reason  —  a  reason 
founded  upon  scientific  principles  —  for  every  step  he  takes  in 
the  process  of  translation.  If  any  difficulty  occur,  the  opera- 
tions of  his  mind  become  at  once  more  deliberate  and  marked. 
The  process  of  analysis  is  perfectly  distinct.  It  commences 
by  setting  aside  those  obvious  relations  which  have  no  direct 
bearing  upon  the  point  under  consideration,  and  proceeds  by 


46  MEMOIRS   OF 

disclosing,  one  by  one,  those  which,  at  first  sight,  are  not  so 
obvious.  Thus  it  exhibits  the  whole  sentence  before  him 
resolved  into  its  elements.  His  knowledge  of  grammatical 
principles  points  out  to  him  the  bearing  of  each  upon  the 
others,  and  finally  the  judgment  is  called  in  to  decide  upon 
the  true  meaning.  The  process  is  similar  to  that  by  which  a 
machinist  determines  the  effect  of  a  certain  combination  of 
wheels  and  levers.  Often  it  is  necessary  likewise  to  take 
into  consideration  the  connection  of  the  given  sentence  with 
those  which  precede  and  follow  it,  or  even  with  the  whole 
paragraph,  and  perhaps  the  whole  drift  of  the  Latin  work. 
Here  is  ample  room  for  "nicely  balancing  the  evidence." 
With  a  beginner,  something  similar  to  this  takes  place  in 
every  clause ;  and  that,  too,  in  the  simplest  sentences,  for  it 
is  only  with  these  that  he  should  have  to  do.  If  he  studies 
as  he  ought  to  study,  every  time  that  he  associates  two  words 
together  he  assigns  to  himself  a  reason  for  so  doing.  In  this, 
then,  consists  the  mental  discipline  for  which  the  ancient  lan- 
guages afford  so  excellent  an  exercise.  But  it  will  be  at  once 
perceived  that  these  advantages  spring  from  the  study  of  the 
structure  of  the  language,  and  further,  from  the  study  of  that 
structure  as  a  means  of  reading  and  understanding  it. 

It  were  needless  to  remark  that,  to  one  who  pursues  the 
system  we  are  considering,  these  advantages  are  wholly  lost. 
The  structure  of  the  language,  if  it  be  ever  studied,  is  studied 
when  it  can  assist  the  student  very  little  in  his  reading.  It 
is  not  studied  for  the  sake  of  affording  him  this  assistance. 
Probably  the  gentleman  is  disposed  to  think  with  the  philoso- 
pher whom  he  claims  as  his  great  prototype  that,  "  if  grammar 
ought  to  be  taught  at  any  time,  it  must  be  to  one  that  can 
speak  the  languages  already."  Be  that  as  it  may,  supposing 
the  system  in  question  wholly  to  accomplish  its  professed  end, 
what  power  of  mind  is  here  called  into  exercise,  except  the 
memory  ?  Through  the  medium  of  this  alone  the  knowledge 
taught  seems  to  be  wholly  communicated.  Indeed,  Locke, 
whose  system  seems  to  us  much  better  calculated  to  disci- 
pline the  mind  than  the  one  we  are  considering,  declares  implic- 
itly at  least,  that  little  else  besides  memory  is  concerned  in 
this  mode  of  instruction.  On  this  point  argument  seems  to  be 


FREDERICK   A.^  P.   BARNARD  47 

unnecessary.  But,  in  the  words  of  the  report  we  have  already 
quoted,  "  a  costly  edifice  ought  not  to  be  left  to  be  supported 
by  a  single  pillar,"  and  we  may  add,  much  less  by  the  one 
which  is  weakest  of  all.  Now,  between  two  systems,  of  which 
one  proposes  to  exercise  and  to  strengthen  all  the  powers  of 
the  mind,  and  the  other  but  a  single  one,  which  shall  we 
choose  ?  " 

The  young  schoolmasters  had  occasion  to  test  another 
method  of  classical  instruction  which  was  followed  by  a 
very  different  person.  One  of  the  famous  schools  of 
Hartford  at  that  time  was  a  seminary  for  young  ladies 
under  the  charge  of  Miss  Catherine  Beecher,  a  sister  of 
Henry  Ward  Beecher  and  of  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe.  The 
text-books  in  Miss  Beecher's  seminary  were  almost  all  of 
her  own  composition,  and  on  one  occasion,  when  visiting 
a  printing  office,  Barnard  chanced  to  see  the  forms  of  a 
new  Latin  grammar  which  she  was  then  just  bringing  out. 
In  the  page  on  which  his  eye  first  rested  he  discovered  a 
serious  error  and  asked  the  foreman  to  tell  him  who  was 
the  author  of  the  book.  Instead  of  a  reply  he  received  a 
stern  rebuke  for  the  impropriety  of  looking  at  "matter" 
"in  form,"  which  is  everywhere  forbidden  by  the  rules 
of  the  craft.  He  confessed  his  fault,  but  excused  it  on 
account  of  the  advantage  to  the  author  of  his  discovery  of 
a  mortifying  if  not  discreditable  error.  The  printer  was 
incredulous,  and  insisted  that,  as  he  had  received  Miss 
Beecher's  own  last  revises  and  corrected  the  proofs  in 
accordance  with  them,  he  should  put  the  forms  to  press 
without  delay.  Barnard  remonstrated,  and  with  some 
difficulty  persuaded  the  proprietor  to  overrule  the  foreman 
so  far  as  to  delay  the  press-work  until  Miss  Beecher  could 
be  consulted.  The  lady  was  grateful  for  Barnard's  inter- 
ference and  ordered  the  printing  of  the  work  to  be  sus- 
pended until  he  could  revise  the  whole  of  it.  This  inci- 


48  MEMOIKS   OF 

dent  led  to  a  discussion  with  Miss  Beecher  of  her  method 
of  teaching  Latin,  and  as  he  did  not  approve  of  her  plan 
in  theory,  she  proposed  that  they  should  test  it  by  a  prac- 
tical experiment.  Sincerely  believing  that  the  experiment 
would  end  in  a  disappointment  to  Miss  Beecher,  and  being 
unwilling  to  incur  her  displeasure  by  pronouncing  it  to  be 
a  failure,  Barnard  begged  that  Carter  might  be  associated 
with  him  in  testing  its  results.  Miss  Beecher  gladly  com- 
plied. A  class  of  girls  was  formed  and  entered  on  the 
study  of  Latin  on  Miss  Beecher's  plan.  At  the  end  of  three 
months  an  examination  was  held  by  Carter  and  Barnard, 
and  both  of  them  were  candid  enough  to  admit,  though 
with  unconcealed  reluctance,  that  they  were  astonished  at 
the  progress  which  the  girls  had  made  in  so  short  a  time. 
It  is  unfortunate  that  in  writing  an  account  of  this  inci- 
dent Dr.  Barnard  gave  no  description  of  Miss  Beecher's 
method;  for  although  it  was  not  adopted  in  the  Grammar 
School,  and  although  Miss  Beecher  afterwards  discon- 
tinued it  in  her  own  school,  he  always  continued  to 
believe  that  it  had  genuine  merit. 

Barnard  had  many  opportunities  of  entertaining  con- 
versation with  Miss  Beecher,  but  comparatively  few  with 
her  sister  and  assistant,  Miss  Harriet.  The  latter  was 
bright  and  spirited,  but  not  beautiful,  though  Barnard 
considered  her  handsome  and  particularly  admired  the 
expression  of  her  eyes.  In  1828  no  one  suspected  that 
Harriet  Beecher  would  ever  write  such  a  book  as  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin  ;  and  at  his  age  it  was  natural  that  he  should 
be  more  attracted  by  the  pupils  than  by  the  teachers  of 
the  seminary.  He  seems  to  have  been  a  pretty  regular 
attendant  at  the  weekly  soirees  which  were  given  at  the 
seminary,  having  the  entree  to  those  reunions,  partly 
through  Miss  Beecher's  favor  and  partly  on  account  of  a 
distant  relationship  to  some  of  the  young  ladies.  One  of 


FREDERICK   A.   P.   BARNARD  49 

Miss  Beecher's  pupils  with  whom  he  formed  a  somewhat 
intimate  friendship  was  Miss  Sarah  P.  Willis,  a  sister  of 
Nathaniel  P.  Willis,  and  afterwards  well  known  to  the 
world  as  Fanny  Fern.  Miss  Willis  was  brilliant  in  con- 
versation and  attractive  in  person,  and  was  deeply  devoted 
to  her  brother,  whose  early  poems  had  given  promise  of  a 
future  excellence  which  he  never  quite  attained.  Such  as 
they  were,  Willis'  early  poems  were  much  admired;  per- 
haps they  were  somewhat  overpraised;  and  the  rising 
fame  of  the  young  poet  was  displeasing  to  another  young 
man,  George  D.  Prentice,  who  was  then  living  at  Hart- 
ford as  editor  of  The  Neiv  England  Review.  Unfortunately 
for  himself,  as  the  event  proved,  Prentice  assailed  Willis 
with  a  severity  which,  to  say  at  least,  was  excessive.  It 
was  just  then  that  Miss  Willis  appeared  at  Hartford  as  a 
pupil  in  Miss  Beecher's  school.  Prentice  fell  violently  in 
love  with  her  and  made  desperate  efforts  to  secure  an 
introduction,  but  in  vain.  Sarah  refused  to  meet  him  or 
to  allow  his  name  to  be  mentioned  in  her  presence.  The 
discomfiture  of  her  admirer  was  signally  complete,  and 
it  is  said  that  in  all  his  life  he  never  met  with  a  rebuff 
which  wounded  him  so  severely  as  this. 

For  a  while  Barnard's  intercourse  with  Prentice  was 
intimate ;  but  the  two  men  were  not  really  congenial  to 
each  other  ;  and  at  last  Barnard  entertained  a  rather 
strong  aversion  to  the  brilliant  journalist.  Prentice 
was  not  handsome  either  in  person  or  in  countenance, 
but  he  was  fascinating  in  manner  and  singularly  charm- 
ing in  conversation.  His  wit  was  swift  and  dazzling, 
and  it  was  often  said  that  he  carelessly  threw  off  more 
good  things  than  he  ever  put  into  his  editorials.  He 
wrote  with  great  facility,  filled  a  large  part  of  his  journal 
with  matter  of  his  own  composition,  and  yet  had  the 
editorial  faculty  of  attracting  and  keeping  other  able 


50  MEMOIRS   OP 

men  in  association  with  him.  One  of  them  was  John  G. 
Whittier,  then  first  making  his  appearance  in  the  world 
of  letters.  Another  was  the  well-known  Park  Benjamin, 
who  became  a  resident  of  Hartford  during  Barnard's 
second  year  there.  Prentice's  retirement  from  The  New 
England  Review  was  bitterly  resented  on  account  of  the 
circumstances  which  attended  it,  and  what  was  regarded 
as  the  political  tergiversation  which  followed.  In  1830 
William  Lloyd  Garrison  was  indicted  for  libel  in  the 
antislavery  organ  he  had  established  in  Baltimore,  and 
his  indictment  was  quickly  followed  by  fine  and  imprison- 
ment. Nothing  could  have  been  more  fortunate  for  his 
fame  or  his  cause.  New  England  was  ablaze  with  excite- 
ment, and  in  all  New  England  none  expressed  more 
cordial  admiration  of  Garrison's  intrepidity,  or  heartier 
sympathy  for  him  in  the  persecution  he  endured,  than 
George  D.  Prentice  in  the  columns  of  The  New  England 
Review.  Presently,  however,  he  was  chosen  to  prepare 
a  Life  of  Henry  Clay,  to  be  used  in  the  contest  for  the 
presidency  of  the  United  States  in  1832,  and  went  to 
Kentucky  with  a  professed  intention  to  return  to  Hart- 
ford as  soon  as  he  should  have  collected  the  materials  for 
his  biography.  He  never  returned,  and  it  was  believed 
that  he  had  never  really  intended  to  return.  His  nu- 
merous debts  and  Miss  Willis'  scornful  rejection  of  his 
advances  had  made  Hartford  odious  to  him.  In  his  sub- 
sequent career  as  editor  of  the  Louisville  Courier,  he 
became  a  bitter  opponent  of  the  principles  he  had  advo- 
cated in  New  England,  and  Barnard  met  him  no  more. 
Mr.  Whittier  was  engaged  to  conduct  The  Review  during 
what  was  expected  to  be  only  a  temporary  absence  of  the 
editor.  Month  after  month  passed  away ;  the  drudgery 
of  editoral  work  became  unendurable  to  the  youthful 
poet,  and  at  length  he  retired  to  Haverhill,  leaving  Bar- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  51 

nard  in  charge  of  the  paper.  He  could  not  make  up  his 
mind  to  resume  his  editorship,  and  so  it  happened  in  the 
latter  part  of  1831  that  Barnard,  who  was  then  again 
living  in  Hartford,  held  for  a  short  time  the  place  of 
editor.  He  had  the  discretion  not  to  retain  his  editorial 
honors  very  long.  He  was  succeeded  by  a  gentleman  who 
was  rather  a  politician  than  a  man  of  letters.  The  Review 
soon  degenerated  into  a  merely  political  organ,  losing,  of 
course,  the  patronage  it  had  enjoyed  as  a  literary  journal. 
It  has  long  been  extinct. 

To  this  first  year  at  Hartford  must  be  assigned  Mr. 
Barnard's  first  appearance  as  an  author.  His  work  was 
by  no  means  an  ambitious  one,  since  it  was  only  a  school 
arithmetic  ;  but  its  plan  was  decidedly  ambitious.  It  was 
intended  to  include  elementary  mental  arithmetic,  together 
with  a  treatise  on  written  arithmetic  in  all  its  parts,  and 
elaborate  exercises  to  illustrate  every  rule.  It  is  needless 
to  say  that  in  this  work  the  young  author  endeavored  to 
give  "the  why  of  things."  The  book  had  merit  enough 
to  be  adopted  by  the  authorities  of  Yale  College  as  the 
text-book  in  which  students  should  be  examined  at  their 
matriculation  ;  but,  to  Barnard's  great  disappointment,  it 
never  came  into  general  use. 

So  the  first  year  at  Hartford  came  to  a  close.  It  was  a 
year  of  hard  study,  hard  work,  and  much  observation  — 
on  the  whole  a  good  and  fruitful  year,  in  which  Barnard 
had  many  opportunities  to  try  his  powers.  He  was  fort- 
unate in  his  association  with  his  fellow-teachers,  and  the 
few  hours  of  recreation  he  allowed  himself  were  passed 
partly  in  attendance  at  Miss  Beecher's  soirees,  where  he 
seems  to  have  quite  forgotten  his  dignity  as  a  teacher  in 
order  to  enjoy  once  more  the  freedom  of  a  boy.  At  the 
close  of  the  session  he  had  the  proud  satisfaction  to  be 
notified  by  the  inhabitants  of  Sheffield  that,  in  making 


52  MEMOIRS   OF 

preparations  for  the  customary  celebration  of  the  Fourth 
of  July,  they  had  unanimously  chosen  him  to  be  "  The 
Orator  of  the  Day."  While  pondering  the  words  of 
patriotic  wisdom  with  which  he  should  electrify  his  au- 
dience, he  was  not  above  the  temptation  to  plan  a  frolic 
with  Miss  Sarah  Willis  and  one  of  his  distant  cousins  at 
the  seminary.  Miss  Beecher's  school  year  was  closed  with 
a  public  reading  of  original  compositions  of  the  young 
ladies  by  some  skilled  elocutionist,  usually  Dr.  Thomas 
Gallaudet.  The  exhibition  was  held  in  the  great  audi- 
torium of  the  Central  Public  School,  to  which  Miss 
Beecher  and  her  pupils  marched  in  procession  from  the 
seminary.  The  proceedings  on  the  occasion  were  a 
trifle  dull  to  the  girls,  and  the  dulness  of  the  exhibition  of 
1829  was  anticipated  with  more  than  usual  dislike  because 
an  attractive  concert  was  to  be  given  on  the  same  even- 
ing in  another  hall.  Barnard  and  the  young  ladies 
sadly  misused  Miss  Beecher's  confidence  by  secretly 
arranging  at  one  of  the  soirees  that,  on  the  evening  of 
the  exhibition,  Miss  Willis  and  her  friend  should  escape 
from  the  procession  and  accompany  Barnard  to  the 
concert.  Somehow  the  plan  miscarried;  and  in  the 
middle  of  the  following  night,  when  Miss  Willis  was 
travelling  in  the  mail-stage  to  her  home  in  Boston  under 
Miss  Beecher's  charge,  she  was  startled  to  hear  the 
solemn  voice  of  her  instructress  addressing  her  with  the 
question,  "  Sarah,  did  you  really  mean  to  run  away  last 
night  ?  "  The  plotting  of  the  youngsters  had  not  escaped 
Miss  Beecher's  vigilance,  and  if  their  escapade  had  been  ac- 
tually attempted,  it  would  have  ended  in  an  ignominious 
fiasco.  Sarah  confessed  that  she  had  wanted  to  run  away, 
but  that  her  courage  had  failed  her.  She  admitted,  too,  in 
answer  to  Miss  Beecher's  questioning,  that  the  wish  was 
naughty.  "But  then  [she  said]  how  could  I  help  it? 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  53 

Your  father  —  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher  —  says  we  are  all 
naughty  by  nature,  and  you  know  I  didn't  make  my 
nature !  " 

The  oration  which  Barnard  had  prepared  for  delivery 
at  Sheffield  was  on  the  slavery  question,  concerning  which 
he  was  ready  to  take  a  decided  position.  "  The  irrepres- 
sible conflict "  had  already  begun,  as  moral  conflicts  al- 
ways begin,  in  the  minds  and  hearts  of  the  people.  No 
one  in  New  England  believed  that  slavery  was  morally 
defensible.  A  few  extreme  abolitionists  held  it  to  be 
the  duty  of  the  national  government  to  abolish  it,  but  the 
general  sentiment  was  opposed  to  violent  measures  and 
would  have  been  content  with  any  prospect  of  gradual 
and  constitutional  emancipation.  A  society  of  which 
Bushrod  Washington,  a  nephew  of  General  Washington, 
was  the  first  president,  and  of  which  Henry  Clay  was  an 
ardent  supporter,  had  been  formed  for  the  purpose  of 
gradually  deporting  the  blacks  of  the  South  to  Africa;  and 
it  was  in  the  character  of  an  advocate  of  that  well-meant 
but  visionary  project  that  Barnard  originally  intended  to 
make  his  first  appearance  as  a  public  orator.  There  were 
many,  however,  who  did  not  favor  the  Colonization  Soci- 
ety, considering  it  to  be  merely  insignificant  in  compari- 
son with  the  end  to  be  attained,  and  therefore  more  likely 
to  prolong  the  existing  agitation  than  to  accomplish  the 
object  at  which  it  aimed.  As  it  would  have  been  out  of 
place  on  such  an  occasion  to  deliver  an  address  which 
might  not  be  acceptable  to  a  portion  of  the  audience,  Bar- 
nard wisely  submitted  his  oration  to  the  judgment  of  a 
council  of  the  elders.  His  sentiments  were  unanimously 
approved,  but  he  was  advised  with  equal  unanimity  not 
to  deliver  the  address  he  had  prepared.  Accordingly,  he 
wrote  and  delivered  a  totally  different  address,  in  the 
usual  spread-eagle  style  of  Fourth-of-July  oratory,  which 


54  MEMOIRS   OF 

offended  nobody  and  was  received  with  rapturous  ap- 
plause. At  night  there  was  the  customary  banquet,  with 
the  customary  toasts.  Invariable  usage  required  that  the 
first  toast  "To  the  Memory  of  Washington"  should  be 
drunk  standing  and  in  silence;  an  equally  imperative 
usage  required  that  the  thirteenth  and  last  regular  toast 
should  be  "To  Woman."  The  toasts  were  drunk  in  a 
quite  literal  way,  and  the  toast-master,  after  twelve  suc- 
cessive potations,  was  somewhat  incapacitated  for  the 
duties  of  his  office.  The  Toast  Committee  had  attached 
to  the  thirteenth  toast  the  then  fresh  but  now  hackneyed 
lines  from  Scott,  beginning  "O  woman,  in  our  hours  of 
ease,"  which  the  toast-master  unluckily  misread,  "Old 
woman,"  etc.  The  poetic  sentiment  was  never  finished. 
A  burst  of  irrepressible  laughter  drowned  the  stentorian 
voice  of  the  reader,  and  a  notable  day  in  the  life  of  Freder- 
ick Barnard  was  at  an  end. 

After  a  vacation  passed  at  Sheffield  Barnard  returned 
to  spend  a  second  year  at  the  Hartford  Grammar  School. 
The  only  incident  of  that  year  worth  recording  was  his 
discovery  of  the  slow  approach  of  an  infirmity  which  dis- 
concerted all  his  plans  and  materially  curtailed  his  powers 
of  usefulness  throughout  his  life.  He  found  that  he  was 
gradually  becoming  deaf.  The  affliction  was  undoubtedly 
hereditary.  His  mother  had  become  distressingly  deaf, 
though  she  had  two  sisters  whose  hearing  was  perfect;  and 
his  brother  and  sister  were  both  afflicted  to  some  extent 
in  the  same  way.  His  own  deafness  came  on  at  first  so 
slightly  that  his  friends  could  not  believe  it  to  be  real. 
Barnard  himself  was  only  too  willing  to  think  he  was  the 
victim  of  a  morbid  fancy.  The  experience  of  the  school- 
room soon  proved  that  his  deafness  was  neither  imaginary 
nor  temporary.  It  was  real,  and  it  steadily  increased.  He 
could  still  discharge  his  duties  without  serious  inconven- 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD  55 

ience,  but  he  allowed  himself  to  cherish  no  illusions  con- 
cerning the  future.  The  hereditary  character  of  his 
infirmity  forbade  him  to  hope  that  it  could  ever  be  cured. 
It  might  indeed  stop  short  of  an  entire  loss  of  hearing; 
but  even  partial  deafness  would  incapacitate  him  for  the 
legal  profession  for  which  he  had  been  preparing  himself, 
and  he  closed  his  Blackstone  "with  a  feeling  of  gloom 
bordering  on  despair."  It  was  no  light  affliction  to  a 
youth  of  twenty  to  find  himself  thus  compelled  to  aban- 
don the  profession  he  had  chosen  and  the  well-grounded 
hopes  of  distinction  he  had  cherished.  It  was  hard,  in- 
deed, for  so  young  a  man  to  realize  that  the  calamity 
which  had  fallen  on  him  would  exclude  him  from  nearly 
every  profession  in  which  an  educated  man  might  hope  to 
earn  his  living,  and  that  it  was  almost  sure  ere  long  to  cut 
him  off  from  all  the  social  enjoyments  which  were  so  con- 
genial to  his  joyous  nature.  It  was  under  the  shadow  of 
these  thoughts  that  Barnard  spent  his  second  year  at 
Hartford. 

Yet  he  did  not  allow  his  heavy  affliction  to  overwhelm 
him.  He  made  friends,  and  made  the  most  of  his  asso- 
ciation with  them.  One  of  them  was  an  old  class- 
mate, Mr.  David  Ely  Bartlett,  a  noble  fellow,  who  now 
became  his  most  intimate  companion  and  correspondent, 
and  remained  one  of  his  closest  friends  through  life. 
Bartlett,  immediately  after  his  graduation,  had  engaged 
himself  as  an  assistant  in  the  American  Asylum  for  the 
Deaf  and  Dumb,  an  institution  founded  at  Hartford  in 
1817  by  the  famous  Dr.  Thomas  Gallaudet.  He  was  a 
born  philanthropist  and  an  enthusiast  in  his  profession ; 
and  when  Barnard's  deafness  began  to  come  on,  Bartlett 
urged  his  despondent  friend  to  join  him  in  the  same  pur- 
suit. He  had  the  tact  to  call  attention  to  the  scientific 
interest  of  his  work,  as  well  as  the  comparatively  fresh 


56  MEMOIRS   OF 

field  of  philanthropic  effort  which  it  offered.  At  first 
Barnard  was  not  attracted  by  the  invitation.  Perhaps  he 
still  clung  more  tenaciously  than  he  himself  knew  to  the 
hope  that  his  infirmity  might  pass  away  and  leave  him 
free  to  follow  the  bent  of  his  own  untrammelled  choice;  but 
at  least  he  felt  relieved  to  know  that,  if  his  worst  appre- 
hensions should  be  realized,  he  could  find  in  the  instruc- 
tion of  deaf-mutes  "  an  occupation  in  which  a  man  might 
make  his  bread  though  he  might  have  no  ears  at  all!" 
It  is  not  so  strange,  perhaps,  as  it  seems,  that  he  never 
thought  of  making  literature  his  profession.  "It  never 
occurred  to  me,"  he  said  afterwards,  "  that  I  might  pos- 
sibly live  by  my  pen.  Never,  even  in  my  most  hopeful 
days,  had  I  indulged  in  the  fond  fancy  which  is  so  com- 
mon in  the  young,  that  a  future  of  literary  celebrity 
might  be  in  store  for  me."  The  truth  is  that  the  course 
of  what  had  been  meant  to  be  his  education  could  hardly 
have  been  better  planned  if  its  purpose  had  been  to  make 
literary  work  distasteful  to  him.  English  he  was  never 
taught;  he  was  taught  Latin  absurdly.  It  does  not  ap- 
pear that  he  ever  wrote  a  single  Latin  sentence,  and  after 
learning  the  grammar  merely  by  rote,  he  was  set  almost 
at  once  to  reading  Virgil  and  Cicero.  In  other  words, 
he  was  never  taught  the  principles  of  composition  in  any 
language;  and  his  first  text-books  were  the  works  of  a 
poet  and  an  orator  whose  complicated  sentences  were 
such  as  could  not  be  used  in  ordinary  speech  or  writing. 
When  he  was  required  to  write  English  prose  composi- 
tions at  Stockbridge,  it  was  inevitable  that  he  should  take 
those  authors  as  his  models  and  use  as  much  as  possible 
of  their  vocabulary.  He  felt  that  there  was  something 
wrong  in  his  style,  but  he  did  not  know  how  to  rid  him- 
self of  the  stiff  and  "  dreary  verbosity  "  which  he  deplored. 
It  may  as  well  be  admitted  here  that  he  never  became  an 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  57 

expert  in  the  art  of  easy  and  graceful  English  writing. 
He   does   not   seem   to   have   made   any  great   effort  to 
acquire  it.     Most  of  his  writing,  and  all  of  his  best  writ- 
ing, like  very  much  of  his  public  speaking,  was  strictly 
extemporaneous.     His   essays   were   full   of  instruction. 
His  views  were  brilliantly  illustrated.     His  conclusions 
were  powerfully  enforced.     On  the  other  hand,  however, 
the  arrangement  of  his  matter  was  seldom  perfectly  con- 
secutive, and  his  style  was  certainly  not  compact.     Yet 
there  is  ample  reason  to  believe  that,  if  he  had  chosen  to 
apply  himself  to  literature,  he  would  have  achieved  dis- 
tinction as  a  man  of  letters.     His  encyclopaedic  knowl- 
edge was  fairly   equalled  by  his  faculty  of   imagination 
and  was  almost  surpassed  by  his  poetic  gift  of  compari- 
son.    At  times,  when  writing  on  a  subject  in  which  he 
was  deeply  interested,  his  style  became  vigorous,  ener- 
getic, and  compact  to  the  point  of  epigram;  and  in  speech 
his  utterances  not  infrequently  rose  to  eloquence.     More- 
over, if  he  had  cared  to  study  niceties  of  form,  there  are 
evidences  that  he  would  easily  have  surpassed  all  ordi- 
nary excellence.     Thus,  at  this  very  period  of  his  life,  he 
composed  a  short  poem,  modelled  after  Sir  William  Tem- 
ple's imitations  of  Hafiz,  which  is  a  fair  indication  of  what 
he  might  have  done  as  a  writer. 

A  SERENADE 

I 

WAKE,  Lady,  wake  !    The  night  is  fair : 

Soft  as  a  summer  shower,  I  feel 
The  breathing  of  the  evening  air, 

As  through  thy  fragrant  bower  I  steal : 
The  stars,  like  diamonds,  rich  and  rare, 

Glow  silently.     This  blessed  hour 
To  stillness  and  to  love  is  dear. 

How  sweet  their  blended  power  I  feel ! 


58  MEMOIRS  OF 

I  wander  in  the  moonlight,  where, 

By  rippling  rill  and  moss-grown  tower, 

Oft  thou  hast  wandered,  love,  and  there 
Full  many  an  odorous  flower  I  steal. 

ii 

The  bird  of  night  upon  the  spray 

Is  warbling ;  strains  of  love  he  sings ; 
Where  moonbeams  in  the  dewdrops  play 

And  zephyrs  gently  move,  he  sings  j 
Where  mournful  minstrels  love  to  stray 

Beneath  the  widely  arching  grove, 
Where  lovers  fond  and  maidens  gay 

Steal  off,  apart  to  rove,  he  sings. 
And  then  a  wild  and  witching  lay, 

Like  spirit-voices,  interwove 
In  pale  Diana's  silver  ray, 

To  spangled  skies  above,  he  sings. 

in 

The  solemn  clock  in  turret  gray, 

With  slow  and  mournful  peal,  I  hear, 
Telling  the  hour  when  elf  and  fay 

Their  mystic  circle  wheel,  my  dear. 
In  yon  lone  dell,  far,  far  away, 

Where  mists  of  night  all  shapes  conceal, 
Save  where,  sometimes,  a  struggling  ray 

Seems  fitfully  to  steal,  I  hear, 
Or  seem  to  hear,  their  frolic  play, 

And  seem  to  see  them  weave  the  spell 
They  ever,  ere  the  break  of  day, 

Weave  for  our  woe  or  weal,  my  dear. 

IV 

But  e'en  the  rapt  star-gazer  now 
Nods  on  his  tube :  no  more,  away, 

His  thoughts,  'mid  heaven's  eternal  glow, 
On  restless  pinion  soar  away ; 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD  59 

The  lover  breathes  the  parting  vow, 

So  often  softly  breathed  before ; 
The  student  turns  with  aching  brow 

Prom  books  of  learned  lore  away. 
All,  all  woo  gentle  slumber  now  : 

So  should'st  thou  too !    My  lay  is  o'er. 
Oh !  rosy  be  thy  dreams,  till  thou 

Shalt  bid  them  flit  once  more  away ! 

It  would  be  idle  to  say  that  the  technique  of  these 
verses  is  perfect ;  but  if  we  recollect  that  they  were 
written  under  such  disadvantages  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
one  or  twenty-two,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  if 
Frederick  Barnard  had  chosen  to  study  the  structure 
of  melodious  English  prose  as  carefully  as  he  studied 
the  difficult  rhyme  and  rhythm  of  Sir  William  Temple's 
stanzas,  he  might  have  become  a  classical  writer  of  his 
mother  tongue.  It  is  no  misfortune  to  the  world  that 
he  did  not  do  so,  but  preferred,  when  the  misfortune 
of  his  life  fell  upon  him,  to  drift  along  in  the  performance 
of  his  daily  duties,  leaving  the  future  to  care  for  itself. 

It  was  during  his  second  year  at  Hartford  that  he 
made  the  acquaintance  of  Park  Benjamin,  with  whom 
he  became  intimate  a  little  later.  He  has  left  an  account 
of  that  extraordinary  man  which  may  properly  be  inserted 
here. 

Physically,  mentally,  and,  perhaps,  I  might  say  morally, 
Benjamin  was  a  bundle  of  inconsistencies.  He  had  a  fine, 
open,  and  even  handsome  countenance,  with  mobile  features 
and  a  wonderful  play  of  expression.  In  person  he  was  well- 
formed  and  above  the  common  strength;  his  hands,  with  a 
grasp  like  a  vice,  might  have  been  a  sculptor's  model;  but 
his  lower  limbs  were  imperfectly  developed  and  so  singularly 
deformed  as  to  be  useless  for  walking.  He  moved  with 
difficulty,  and  only  with  the  aid  of  crutches.  Intellectually 
he  was  a  phenomenon.  Gifted  with  a  lively  imagination,  a 


60  MEMOIRS   OF 

brilliant  wit,  and  an  exhaustless  flow  of  language,  in  social 
intercourse  he  was  the  most  fascinating  man  I  ever  met. 
His  powers  of  elocution  were  truly  wonderful;  if  he  had 
been  able  and  disposed  to  tread  the  boards,  he  could  not 
have  failed  to  take  the  highest  rank  in  either  tragedy  or 
comedy.  His  talent  for  mimicry  was  extraordinary.  He 
could  catch  and  imitate  the  tone,  the  manner,  the  facial  ex- 
pression, and,  what  was  more  wonderful,  the  style  and  lan- 
guage of  any  public  speaker  whom  he  happened  to  have  heard, 
with  an  exactness  which  never  failed  to  excite  admiration  and 
astonishment.  Some  of  the  elocutionary  performances  into 
which  he  seemed  often  to  drop  without  premeditation  were 
so  remarkable,  considered  merely  from  a  literary  point  of 
view,  that,  although  they  seemed  to  be  spontaneous  improv- 
isations, I  could  not  help  suspecting  that  they  had  been 
deliberately  prepared.  He  was  a  natural  versifier  and  com- 
posed in  verse  almost  as  easily  as  in  prose.  On  one  occa- 
sion I  witnessed  a  remarkable  illustration  of  his  facility  in 
versifying.  A  friend  of  ours  who  had  come  across  Schiller's 
ballad  of  Koland  and  his  life-long  watch  above  the  cloistered 
garden  of  Nonnenwerth,  was  so  enraptured  with  it  that  he 
could  not  rest  until  he  had  obtained  an  English  translation  of 
it.  Being  unable  to  make  it  for  himself,  he  asked  Benjamin 
to  make  it  for  him.  Benjamin  objected  that  he  could  not  read 
the  original.  "Never  mind,"  was  the  rejoinder,  "we  can 
divide  the  work.  I  will  translate  the  German,  stanza  by 
stanza,  and  you  shall  put  it  into  verse."  The  proposal  was 
accepted,  and  I  saw  Benjamin  turn  the  ballad  into  smooth  and 
elegant  English  verse,  taking  scarcely  more  time  to  produce 
it  than  our  friend  took  for  the  translation.  The  version  was 
printed  at  the  time  in  one  of  the  Hartford  papers,  but  whether 
it  was  ever  included  in  any  published  volume,  or  whether  Ben- 
jamin's numerous  fugitive  poems  were  ever  so  collected,  I  do 
not  know.  With  all  his  brilliant  faculties,  and  with  all  his 
genius,  —  for  his  was  a  true  genius,  —  he  lacked  the  powers 
of  mental  concentration  and  persistency  of  effort  which  are 
indispensable  to  the  creation  of  any  great  and  lasting  liter- 
ary monument.  He  was  versatile  and  dazzling;  but  his 
brightness  was  that  of  a  spray  of  a  cataract,  testifying  to 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  61 

the  reality  of  a  power  which  is  running  to  waste.  He  pro- 
duced much,  but  his  writings  were  desultory,  and,  for  the 
most  part,  ephemeral.  He  was  a  born  journalist,  and  in 
journalism  most  of  his  literary  life  was  spent.  It  was  not 
from  his  writings  but  from  himself  that  those  who  knew  him 
have  derived  their  most  vivid  impressions  of  him.  Wherever 
he  happened  to  be,  he  was  the  life  of  the  party,  always  con- 
triving to  interest  or  amuse,  and  often  convulsing  his  com- 
panions with  irrepressible  laughter.  The  singular  flexibility 
of  his  countenance  endowed  him  with  a  power  of  grimace 
which,  in  his  merry  moods,  he  would  occasionally  use  with 
startling  and  irresistibly  comic  effect.  His  readiness  in  rep- 
artee was  sometimes  exhibited  in  epigram,  in  which  he  was 
equally  facile  and  felicitous.  Once,  when  he  was  expressing 
his  contempt  for  self-sufficient  meddlers  who  are  always  set- 
ting the  world  to  rights,  or,  as  Shakespeare  expresses  it,  to 
"turn  the  coat  of  the  commonwealth  and  put  a  new  nap  on 
it,"  he  concluded  with  this  little  bit  of  off-hand  epigram: 

•'  How  well  it  is  the  sun  and  moon 

Are  hung  so  very  high 
That  no  presumptuous  hand  can  reach 
Their  places  in  the  sky  ! 

«*  If  'twere  not  so,  I  do  believe 

That  some  conceited  ass 
Would  soon  propose  to  take  them  down 
And  light  the  world  with  gas  ! " 

Benjamin  naturally  gravitated  to  New  York.  He  engaged 
there  in  several  literary  ventures,  among  others,  The  New  York 
World,  a  literary  journal,  not  the  journal  now  known  by  the 
same  name ;  but  he  transformed  it  into  a  mammoth  sheet  called 
The  Western  Continent,  adopting  as  its  motto : 

**  No  pent-up  Utica  contracts  our  powers; 
The  whole  unbounded  continent  is  ours." 

During  my  first  residence  in  New  York,  from  1832  to  1837, 
I  was  in  intimate  association  with  him,  and  he  continued  there 
after  my  departure  to  the  end  of  his  life.  During  my  subse- 
quent residence  in  the  South  I  maintained  a  correspondence 


62  MEMOIRS   OF 

with  him  for  several  years,  but  it  was  gradually  dropped. 
Quarter  of  a  century  later,  when  I  was  called  to  New  York, 
I  had  quite  lost  sight  of  him;  but  the  notice  of  my  call  to 
Columbia  College  caught  his  eye,  and  he  wrote  me  a  note 
inquiring  rather  unceremoniously,  "  Are  you  that  same  old 
Fred  Barnard  that  I  used  to  know  in  Hartford?"  I  need 
not  say  that  I  promptly  answered  the  inquiry.  I  followed 
my  note  in  person  with  the  least  possible  delay,  but  to  my 
very  painful  surprise  I  was  told  that  he  was  seriously  ill, 
and  I  did  not  see  him.  A  few  days  afterwards,  on  Septem- 
ber 18th,  1864,  he  passed  away;  so  that  I  never  again  met 
Park  Benjamin,  one  of  the  most  gifted  and  highly  prized  of 
all  my  life's  early  friends. 

Among  the  other  persons  whom  Barnard  knew,  but 
with  whom  he  made  only  a  slight  acquaintance  while  in 
Hartford,  were  Mrs.  Lydia  Hunt  Sigourney,  who  then 
filled  a  considerable  place  in  the  literary  world  of  this 
country;  Professor  Horatio  Potter,  who  afterwards  be- 
came Bishop  of  New  York ;  Henry  L.  Ellsworth,  Com- 
missioner of  Patents  under  President  Van  Buren  ;  John 
M.  Niles,  afterwards  Senator  of  the  United  States ;  Lewis 
Gaylord  Clark,  who  was  then  frittering  away  his  time  in 
pretending  to  edit  The  Mirror,  but  who  was  afterwards 
to  be  widely  known  as  the  laborious  and  accomplished 
editor  of  The  Knickerbocker  Magazine;  Junius  L.  Morgan, 
then  a  mere  boy,  but  afterwards  a  power  in  the  financial 
world  of  both  hemispheres ;  and  Gideon  Wells,  Secretary 
of  the  Navy  under  President  Lincoln.  At  that  time  Mr. 
Wells  was  "  a  democrat  of  the  deepest  dye  "  ;  and  when 
Dr.  Barnard  next  saw  him  transformed  into  a  "black 
republican  "  cabinet  minister,  he  began  to  think  it  possi- 
ble that  an  Ethiopian  might  change  his  skin  or  a  leopard 
his  spots! 

At  the  close  of  the  school  year  of  1829-30,  Barnard 
received  his  expected  call  to  a  tutorship  in  Yale  College. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  63 

His  deafness  had  not  yet  become  so  great  as  to  incapaci- 
tate him  for  the  duties  of  that  office,  and  there  was  still  a 
chance  that  it  might  become  no  greater.  Accordingly, 
he  accepted  the  position  with  some  faint  hope  that  he 
might  be  able  to  retain  it,  and  bade  farewell  to  the  Gram- 
mar School  in  which  he  had  begun  what  was  destined, 
but  not  intended,  to  be  his  life-work  as  an  educator.  As 
events  turned  out,  he  was  soon  to  spend  another  year  at 
Hartford,  but  most  of  the  persons  and  incidents  con- 
nected with  his  sojourn  in  that  place  have  been  men- 
tioned, partly  by  anticipation,  in  the  present  chapter. 


64  MEMOIRS   OF 


CHAPTER   IV 

College  government  at  Yale  in  1830  — Morning  prayers  — A  case  of  dis- 
cipline—  Increasing  deafness  —  Barnard  resigns  his  tutorship  and 
accepts  a  position  in  the  American  Institution  for  the  Deaf  and  Dumb 
at  Hartford  —  Theory  and  practice  of  deaf-mute  education  —  Julia 
Brace  —  The  cholera  season  of  1832  —  The  New  York  Institution  for 
the  Instruction  of  the  Deaf  and  Dumb  —  Barnard  visits  New  York  — 
A  city  of  desolation  —  New  York  as  it  was  in  1832  —  Barnard  accepts 
a  position  in  the  New  York  Institution  —  A  congenial  faculty  — 
Scientific  studies  —  The  star  shower  of  1832  —  Barnard  is  confirmed 
—  Meeting  with  Dr.  Manly  of  Alabama  —  Professorship  of  Mathe- 
matics and  Natural  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Alabama  accepted. 

MB.  BAKNARD  had  no  sooner  entered  upon  his  duties  as 
a  tutor  in  Yale  College  than  he  succeeded  in  securing  the 
beginning  of  a  much-needed  reform.  While  he  was  an 
undergraduate  he  had  seen  the  disadvantage  to  the  stu- 
dents of  being  instructed  for  the  first  three  years  of  their 
course  by  a  single  tutor  in  all  branches  of  study,  instead 
of  having  the  instruction  of  experts  in  every  several 
branch.  On  his  return  as  a  tutor  he  was  assigned  to 
the  freshman  class  then  just  entering.  His  associates 
were  Mr.  Lamed,  afterwards  Professor  of  Rhetoric  and 
Oratory,  and  Professor  Gibbs,  who  was  then  Professor  of 
Sacred  Literature,  but  was  obliged,  on  account  of  the 
inadequate  endowment  of  his  chair,  to  take  additional 
duty  as  a  tutor.  Of  the  three,  Barnard  was  easily  the 
first  in  mathematics,  Gibbs  excelled  in  Greek,  and 
Lamed  in  Latin.  Barnard  proposed  that  they  should 
divide  their  work  accordingly ;  the  permission  of  the 
Faculty  was  obtained,  and  thus  an  important  reform  of 
method  was  happily  inaugurated  to  the  great  advantage 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  65 

of  the  students.  The  new  arrangement  worked  well  for 
the  tutors  also,  and  Barnard,  having  little  need  of  prep- 
aration for  the  duties  of  the  class-room,  had  ample  time 
to  pursue  his  own  studies  in  the  higher  mathematics. 

The  Governing  Board,  or  Faculty,  of  Yale  College 
differed  from  that  of  other  colleges  in  this  respect,  that 
it  included  the  tutors  as  well  as  the  professors  among 
its  members.  The  tutors,  however,  were  further  organ- 
ized as  a  subordinate  body,  called  the  Sub-Faculty,  which 
met  twice  a  week  and  had  full  charge  of  the  petty  dis- 
cipline of  the  college.  To  each  tutor  was  entrusted  the 
personal  oversight  of  the  students  in  a  particular  part 
of  the  buildings,  and  he  was  required  to  report  all 
breaches  of  good  order  to  the  Sub-Faculty.  Minor  cen- 
sures, such  as  "admonitions,"  "warnings,"  and  "letters 
home,"  were  imposed  by  the  Sub-Faculty  alone  ;  graver 
cases,  requiring  the  heavier  penalties  of  suspension  or 
expulsion,  were  reserved  for  the  judgment  of  the  Faculty. 
The  tutors  were  mostly  very  young  men,  and  when  not 
required  to  pose  as  dons,  some  of  them  were  quite  ready 
to  enjoy  a  frolic  of  their  own. 

The  senior  tutor,  who  presided  at  the  meetings  of  the 
Sub-Faculty,  was  a  man  of  ability,  an  excellent  officer, 
and  a  good  disciplinarian,  but  excessively  sensitive  to 
public  opinion  and  unduly  anxious  to  be  considered  popu- 
lar with  the  students.  His  amiable  foible  made  him  an 
easy  victim  of  some  of  his  associates,  who  played  all  man- 
ner of  tricks  upon  him,  and,  on  one  occasion,  two  of  them 
actually  "smoked"  him  by  filling  the  key-hole  of  his 
room  door  with  burning  tobacco.  At  the  semi-weekly 
meetings  of  the  Sub-Faculty  these  indignities  were  re- 
ported, of  course,  by  the  senior  tutor,  and  were  sympa- 
thetically discussed  by  the  perpetrators  themselves  as 
evidences  of  the  undeserved  and  unaccountable  aversion 


66  MEMOIRS   OF 

of  the  students  for  the  president  of  the  Sub-Faculty. 
The  gravity  of  these  discussions  was  the  most  ludicrous 
part  of  the  performance,  and  it  occasionally  happened 
that  the  time  of  a  Sub-Faculty  meeting  was  almost 
entirely  consumed  in  the  solemn  consideration  of  some 
mischievous  prank  which  had  really  been  played  by  one 
or  more  of  the  tutors  themselves. 

The  meetings  of  the  Sub-Faculty  were  invariably 
opened  with  prayer,  which  was  offered  by  each  of  the 
tutors  in  turn.  Some  of  those  gentlemen  had  great 
"freedom  in  prayer"  and  seemed  to  be  both  able  and 
willing  to  "  pray  without  ceasing " ;  but  Barnard  was 
not  a  "professor  of  religion,"  and  his  sense  of  the  fitness 
of  things,  as  well  as  a  certain  natural  diffidence,  made 
this  duty  extremely  irksome.  He  was  still  more  pain- 
fully embarrassed  when  his  turn  came  to  officiate  in  the 
public  services  of  the  College  Chapel.  They  were  held 
morning  and  evening,  and  were  conducted  in  turn  by 
the  professors  and  tutors,  one  professor  and  one  tutor 
being  assigned  to  each  service  according  to  a  settled 
programme.  Morning  prayer  took  place  at  six  o'clock 
all  the  year  through,  and  in  winter,  of  course,  long  be- 
fore the  dawn  of  day.  The  service  consisted  of  a  brief  in- 
vocation, a  lesson  from  the  Bible,  a  hymn,  and  the  "  long 
prayer."  The  first  part  of  the  exercises  was  taken 
by  the  officiating  tutors,  and  the  second  by  the  professor. 
When  the  appointed  professor  was  necessarily  absent, 
the  whole  service  was  performed  by  the  tutor.  Barnard 
waited  in  great  anxiety  for  his  turn  to  officiate. 

There  was  no  part  of  my  duty  [he  wrote]  to  which  I  looked 
forward  with  so  much  apprehension,  and,  I  might  even  say, 
with  so  much  dread.  I  distrusted  my  readiness  in  extempo- 
rary prayer,  and  I  fear  I  had  a  more  oppressive  sense  of  the 
critical  congregation  of  three  or  four  hundred  young  men 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD  67 

before  whom  I  must  stand  up  than  of  the  august  Being  I 
was  to  address.  As  one  of  the  junior  tutors,  my  name  stood 
low  on  the  list,  and  as  I  saw  my  turn  approaching,  I  made 
some  preparation.  When  the  dreaded  morning  arrived,  I  had 
nerved  myself  to  meet  the  exigency ;  but  it  came  to  me  in  a 
form  I  had  little  expected.  A  messenger  informed  me  that 
the  president,  whom  I  was  to  have  assisted,  had  been  called 
to  Hartford,  and  that  I  should  be  alone  in  the  pulpit.  This 
announcement  almost  took  my  breath  away;  but  there  was 
no  retreat.  The  duty  must  be  done,  and  there  was  nothing 
before  me  but  to  do  it  as  best  I  might.  It  was  well  for  me 
that  I  had  thought  the  whole  matter  over  in  advance,  and  I 
suppose  that  such  imperfect  preparation  as  I  had  made  was 
of  some  assistance  to  me;  but  I  hardly  knew  what  I  was 
saying,  and  when  the  service  was  over,  I  had  no  idea  whether 
I  had  done  well  or  ill.  A  few  days  later,  however,  my  friend 
Carter,  who  was  a  praying  man,  gave  me  much  comfort.  "  Do 
you  know,"  he  said  to  me,  "what  I  thought  of  your  chapel 
service  ?  I  could  not  help  wishing  that  you  might  make  as 
good  a  prayer  as  that  every  day." 

It  may  easily  be  imagined  that  such  an  experience 
would  go  far  to  confirm  Barnard's  belief  in  the  expedi- 
ency and  propriety  of  using  precomposed  forms  of  prayer 
in  public  worship. 

At  the  meetings  of  the  Faculty,  in  considering  the 
penalties  to  be  imposed  for  grave  breaches  of  discipline, 
it  was  customary  to  take  the  opinions  of  all  the  members 
severally,  beginning  with  the  youngest;  and  soon  after 
his  tutorship  began  Barnard's  inclination  to  mildness 
brought  down  upon  him  what  he  felt  to  be  a  severe 
rebuke  from  an  older  member  of  the  Faculty.  The 
recognized  head  of  the  senior  class  of  that  year  was  a 
young  gentleman  from  South  Carolina.  In  a  dispute 
with  one  of  his  fellow-students  he  was  grossly  affronted, 
his  antagonist  going  so  far  as  to  impeach  his  honor  and 
his  personal  courage.  The  fiery  South  Carolinian  thought 


68  MEMOIRS   OF 

it  necessary  to  avenge  the  insult  by  administering  an 
ignominious  flogging  to  his  assailant  in  the  open  street. 
He  was  promptly  summoned  to  appear  before  the  Faculty 
and  show  cause  why  he  should  not  be  summarily  expelled. 
The  trial  was  brief.  No  witnesses  were  called.  The 
culprit  acknowledged  his  offence,  but  entered  a  plea  of 
extenuating  circumstances. 

His  •  speech  to  the  Faculty  [says  Dr.  Barnard]  was  both 
eloquent  and  impressive,  and  his  bearing  was  manly  and 
dignified.  He  said  that  in  the  community  to  which  he  be- 
longed such  an  affront  as  had  been  offered  to  him  could  not 
be  allowed  to  pass  unpunished  without  overwhelming  disgrace. 
If  he  had  failed  to  resent  it  as  public  opinion  in  Charleston 
required,  he  could  never  again  have  shown  his  face  in  his  native 
city.  He  had  had  no  alternative  but  either  to  call  his  adver- 
sary out  and  shoot  him  or  else  to  inflict  a  personal  chastise- 
ment, and  he  had  chosen  the  course  which  he  had  thought  to 
be  the  less  censurable.  He  admitted  that  he  had  violated  both 
the  municipal  and  academic  law.  He  did  not  expect  to  escape 
censure,  and  he  professed  his  readiness  to  submit  to  it;  but 
he  thought  that  the  moral  and  social  constraint  under  which 
he  had  acted  might  to  some  extent  commend  him  to  the 
sympathy  of  his  judges  and  incline  them  to  mitigate  their 
sentence. 

After  this  defence,  it  fell  to  Barnard,  as  the  junior  tutor 
present,  to  be  first  called  to  express  his  opinion  of  the 
case.  He  modestly  said  that  he  could  not  help  feeling 
the  force  of  the  plea  which  had  been  offered  by  the 
student.  He  admitted  that  the  young  man  could  not 
be  allowed  to  remain  in  the  college;  but,  considering  the 
high  standing  he  had  held  in  his  class,  Barnard  thought 
it  would  be  punishment  enough  to  deprive  him  of  his 
brilliant  prospect  of  academic  honors  by  requiring  him 
to  withdraw  from  the  institution,  without  putting  upon 
him  the  stigma  of  a  public  expulsion.  These  views  did 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  69 

not  commend  themselves  to  the  other  members  of  the 
Faculty.  One  by  one,  not  indeed  with  great  severity, 
and  not  with  entire  unanimity,  but  with  a  substantial 
agreement,  they  maintained  that  the  public  expulsion  of 
the  offender  was  necessary.  At  length  Professor  Good- 
rich, turning  to  Barnard  and  directly  addressing  him, 
exclaimed : 

"  I  will  never  for  one  moment  countenance  or  tolerate  princi- 
ples which  are  a  tradition  from  a  savage  state  of  society  and  a 
disgrace  to  civilization.  A  man  who  will  swerve  one  hair's 
breadth  from  the  right,  out  of  respect  to  a  perverse,  irrational, 
and  unchristian  public  spirit,  is  no  man  at  all ;  and  whatever 
other  communities  may  do,  a  Christian  people  like  that  of 
New  England,  and  a  Christian  institution  like  Yale  College, 
must  not  fail  to  stamp  with  its  most  indignant  and  uncom- 
promising condemnation  the  spirit  of  vindictiveness  which,  in 
South  Carolina,  is  dignified  with  the  name  of  honor." 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  the  unfortunate  South 
Carolinian  was  expelled.  Barnard  left  the  Faculty  meet- 
ing feeling  that  he  must  have  been  almost  as  culpable  as 
he;  and  yet  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the  young  tutor's 
desire  to  temper  judgment  with  mercy  was  not  less  vin- 
dictive and  more  Christian,  as  well  as  more  becoming  the 
character  of  a  considerate  teacher,  than  the  uncompromis- 
ing verdict  of  the  strenuous  professor. 

Barnard's  time  of  service  at  the  college  was  a  time  of 
great  depression  on  account  of  his  increasing  deafness. 
In  the  class-room  he  discovered  that  he  could  hardly  hear 
the  students  who  were  seated  on  the  farther  side  of  the 
room.  He  made  daily  experiments  with  his  watch,  care- 
fully measuring  the  distance  at  which  its  ticking  ceased  to 
be  audible,  and  finding  to  his  dismay  that  it  was  gradually 
but  steadily  growing  less.  In  the  society  of  persons  with 
whom  he  was  not  intimately  acquainted  he  was  much 


70  MEMOIRS   OF 

embarrassed,  and  he  began  to  avoid  society.  His  health 
in  other  respects  was  not  good.  He  suffered  from  a 
chronic  cough,  caused  by  an  inflammation  of  the  mucous 
membrane  of  the  air  passages  of  the  lungs,  which  con- 
tinued to  trouble  him  for  several  years.  Even  his  favorite 
studies  failed  to  distract  his  mind  from  the  gloomy  pros- 
pect before  him;  and  yet  he  worked  bravely  on,  and  he 
had  the  satisfaction  to  know  that  his  merits  were  ap- 
preciated. Professor  Olmstead,  who  then  held  the  united 
chairs  of  Mathematics  and  Physics,  desired  to  be  relieved 
of  the  former  by  the  appointment  of  a  professor  of  that 
science  alone.  The  trustees  of  the  college  were  favorable 
to  the  change,  and  resolved  to  make  it  as  soon  as  means 
could  be  obtained  for  the  support  of  an  additional  pro- 
fessor. It  was  hoped  and  believed  that  the  necessary 
means  would  be  forthcoming,  and  Professor  Olmstead 
proposed  to  Barnard  to  become  his  colleague  when  the 
professorship  should  be  established.  There  was  no  other 
candidate ;  no  one  else  seems  to  have  been  thought  of. 
Thus,  at  the  early  age  of  twenty-one,  the  line  of  promo- 
tion was  wonderfully  opened  before  him.  He  already 
stood  well  with  the  Faculty  and  the  trustees  of  the 
college,  and  he  had  every  prospect  of  being  advanced 
within  a  few  years  to  the  dignity  of  a  professor  in  his 
alma  mater.  If  the  chair  of  Mathematics  had  been 
established  immediately,  he  would  doubtless  have  ac- 
cepted it,  hoping,  even  against  hope,  that  he  might  be 
able  to  perform  its  duties.  But  he  did  not  feel  justified 
in  waiting  an  indefinite  time.  His  friend  Bartlett  had 
renewed  his  efforts  to  induce  him  to  take  service  in  the 
American  Institution  for  the  Deaf  and  Dumb  at  Hartford, 
and  he  now  became  anxious  to  do  so.  For  a  time,  how- 
ever, the  negotiations  lagged  on  account  of  an  objection 
that  Barnard  was  not  a  "  professor  of  religion."  If  that 


FREDERICK:  A.  p.  BARNARD  71 

objection  had  been  pressed,  he  would  never  have  con- 
sented to  remove  it;  but  it  was  at  length  abandoned,  and 
he  accepted  the  position  offered.  In  the  month  of  May, 
1831,  he  resigned  his  tutorship  and  went  to  Hartford. 

The  earlier  teachers  of  deaf-mutes  in  the  eighteenth 
century  aimed  at  nothing  less  than  enabling  the  dumb  to 
speak,  and  it  was  found  to  be  possible  to  accomplish  that 
difficult  undertaking.  When  it  had  been  done,  however, 
there  remained  the  still  more  difficult  task  of  teaching 
the  deaf  person  to  follow  spoken  language  by  observing 
the  motion  of  the  lips.  The  time  and  labor  required  for 
these  two  courses  of  instruction  made  it  impracticable  to 
apply  them  to  the  relief  of  more  than  a  few  persons, 
and  the  Abbe  de  1'Epee,  whose  philanthropic  efforts  were 
begun  in  Paris  in  the  year  1755,  was  fully  convinced  by 
his  own  experience  that  it  was  useless  to  attempt  to 
teach  the  majority  of  deaf-mutes  anything  more  than 
the  use  of  written  language. 

The  natural  and  only  possible  medium  of  communica- 
tion between  uneducated  deaf-mutes,  or  between  them 
and  persons  who  can  speak,  is  pantomime,  or  the  use  of 
suggestive  and  imitative  signs ;  and  in  the  earlier  stages 
of  elementary  instruction  this  natural  sign-language  is 
necessarily  used  by  the  teacher.  It  happily  occurred 
to  the  Abbe  Sicard,  the  eminent  successor  of  the  Abbe 
de  1'Epee,  that  something  of  the  definiteness  and  copi- 
ousness of  oral  speech  might  be  imparted  to  the  sign- 
language  by  attaching  a  distinctive  sign  to  each  particular 
word,  and  by  introducing  auxiliary  signs  to  denote  gram- 
matical relations.  The  new  system  of  signs  which  he 
devised  in  the  application  of  this  idea  was  to  a  great 
extent  arbitrary  and  artificial,  but  as  it  required  nothing 
more  from  the  pupil  than  the  exercise  of  attention  and 
the  use  of  faculties  which  he  naturally  possessed,  it  was 


72  MEMOIRS  OF 

mastered  with  comparative  ease  and  was  found  to  be  of 
great  use  in  teaching  deaf-mutes  to  read  and  write.  It 
was  seldom  used,  however,  in  colloquial  intercourse,  but 
was  strictly  followed  in  the  dictation  exercises  of  the 
class-room. 

One  of  the  Abbe  Sicard's  most  eminent  disciples  was 
the  famous  Dr.  Thomas  Gallaudet,  who  was  completely 
trained  by  him  and  who  introduced  the  system  of  signes 
m6thodiques  into  this  country.  In  1817  he  organized  the 
American  Asylum  for  the  Deaf  and  Dumb  at  Hartford, 
and  for  thirteen  years  he  directed  its  operations  with 
great  success.  In  1830  he  resigned  his  position  on  ac- 
count of  differences  with  the  board  of  managers,  and 
was  succeeded  by  Mr.  Lewis  Weld,  who  had  himself  been 
trained  in  the  American  Asylum.  It  was  under  Mr. 
Weld's  supervision  that  Mr.  Barnard  entered  on  his 
duties.  The  new  superintendent  was  a  good  deal  of 
a  martinet,  and  his  accession  to  the  headship  of  the 
Asylum  had  been  marked  by  the  introduction  of  cer- 
tain innovations  which  were  distasteful  to  his  subordi- 
nates. Among  other  new  arrangements  he  established  a 
regular  weekly  drill  in  the  elements  of  the  sign-language, 
and  required  all  his  associates,  nearly  a  dozen  in  number, 
to  follow  his  personal  exemplifications  of  the  work.  To 
some  of  them,  as,  for  instance,  to  M.  Laurent  Clerc,  a 
deaf-mute  proficient  who  had  been  trained  by  Sicard  and 
had  been  brought  over  by  Dr.  Gallaudet  fifteen  years 
before  in  order  to  serve  as  a  living  expositor  of  the 
system,  these  exercises  in  the  elements  of  a  science  in 
which  they  knew  themselves  to  be  experts  were  needlessly 
humiliating  as  well  as  useless  and  irksome.  The  result 
was  a  certain  spirit  of  dissatisfaction  among  the  staff  of 
teachers ;  but  however  others  might  complain,  beginners 
like  Mr.  Barnard  had  every  reason  to  be  thankful  for  the 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  73 

careful  instructions  given  by  their  principal  in  his  weekly 
and  semi-weekly  sign-drills. 

To  acquire  the  sign-language  was  the  first  indispensable 
step  in  preparing  himself  to  become  a  teacher  of  deaf- 
mutes,  and  here  he  found  that  his  habits  of  observation 
and  his  natural  faculty  of  comparison  made  his  progress 
far  more  rapid  than  he  had  expected. 

My  first  need  [he  afterwards  wrote]  was  to  form  a  just 
conception  of  the  principles  on  which  the  pantomime  signs 
are  formed.  The  natural  language  of  pantomime  is  not,  like 
spoken  language,  a  body  of  definite  symbols  of  invariable 
form.  It  consists  of  any  and  all  forms  of  manual  or  bodily 
action  which  can  be  used  to  represent  or  suggest  the  object 
or  idea  intended  by  the  actor.  Thus  a  book  may  be  denoted 
by  rapidly  indicating  its  form  with  the  finger,  imitating  the 
motions  of  opening  and  closing  a  volume  and  of  turning  the 
leaves,  and  then  holding  the  hands  before  the  face  as  in  read- 
ing. After  the  idea  has  been  distinctly  conveyed  and  under- 
stood, it  suffices  to  use  only  the  gesture  of  opening  and  closing 
a  volume,  without  other  details ;  and  it  is  by  following  this 
simple  method  that  the  entire  vocabulary  of  abridged  signs 
which  is  colloquially  used  by  deaf-mutes  has  been  formed. 
Every  sign  is  simply  some  characteristic  gesture  taken  from  a 
detailed  pantomimic  description.  Abstract  ideas  are  repre- 
sented in  the  same  way ;  for  nothing  is  clearer  than  that,  even 
in  spoken  language,  abstract  ideas  are  first  represented  in 
words  which  signify  some  physical  action  or  operation.  Thus, 
the  word  abstract  itself  is  derived  from  ab  and  traho,  and  repre- 
sents the  action  or  process  of  drawing  one  thing  from  another 
through  a  perceptible  space.  I  have  often  been  asked  how  it 
is  possible  to  convey  abstract  ideas  to  a  deaf-mute ;  but  there 
is  no  insuperable  difficulty  to  prevent  it.  In  fact,  it  is  as  easy 
as  to  convey  the  same  idea  to  a  speaking  person  by  means  of 
verbal  definitions  which  often  do  nothing  more  than  substitute 
one  intelligible  word  for  another. 

Entering,  as  he  did,  upon  his  new  study  with  intelli- 
gence and  industry,  Mr.  Barnard  found  it  far  more  inter- 


74  MEMOIRS   OF 

esting  than  he  had  anticipated.  He  rapidly  learned  all 
that  there  was  to  be  learned  in  the  institution  at  Hartford, 
read  all  the  books  on  deaf-mute  instruction  that  were  to  be 
found  in  the  library,  and  so  prepared  himself  for  other 
duties  and  for  more  advanced  studies  in  his  next  position. 
So  devoted  was  he  to  his  work  that  during  his  vacation 
he  invented  parlor  games  or  charades  in  which  the  art  of 
pantomimic  gesture  was  used  to  represent  all  sorts  of 
objects  and  ideas,  to  the  great  amusement  and  instruction 
of  his  friends  in  Sheffield.  In  short,  he  devoted  his 
whole  time  and  thought  to  the  principles  and  practice  of 
deaf-mute  instruction,  and  speedily  became  a  master  of 
the  former  and  an  adept  in  the  latter. 

Among  the  pupils  at  the  Hartford  institution  was  a 
young  girl,  Julia  Brace,  who  had  been  deaf,  dumb,  and 
blind  from  the  age  of  four  years,  and  whose  attainments 
were  nearly  as  wonderful  as  those  of  Laura  Bridgeman. 
When  she  went  to  Hartford,  she  had  long  lost  all  recol- 
lection of  speech,  but  by  the  persevering  assiduity  of  her 
teachers  she  was  taught  to  use  the  manual  alphabet  and 
as  much  of  the  sign-language  as  could  be  communicated 
to  her  through  the  sense  of  touch.  She  became  an  accom- 
plished seamstress  and  usually  made  all  her  own  gar- 
ments. Strangers  were  astonished  to  see  her  thread  a 
needle  by  touching  it  with  the  tip  of  her  tongue,  which 
she  did  more  rapidly  than  most  persons  who  do  it  with 
the  fingers.  Her  perceptive  powers  were  wonderful. 
She  never  forgot  a  person  who  had  once  been  presented 
to  her,  and  seemed  always  to  be  aware  of  their  presence 
even  when  they  made  no  effort  to  attract  her  attention. 
Every  member  of  the  small  community  in  the  Asylum 
was  designated  by  a  distinctive  sign  which  answered  the 
purpose  of  a  proper  name.  Mr.  Barnard,  for  example, 
was  designated  by  placing  the  thumb  nail  of  the  closed 


FREDERICK  A.  P.   BARNARD  75 

right  hand  against  the  chin,  and  whenever  he  approached 
her,  she  invariably  made  that  sign.  Many  strangers  went 
to  the  institution  to  see  her,  and  would  often  test  her 
powers  by  placing  in  her  hands  a  number  of  small  objects, 
such  as  handkerchiefs,  gloves,  watches,  rings,  snuff-boxes, 
pencil-cases,  and  the  like,  which  she  would  examine  with 
interest  and  would  never  fail  to  return  to  their  several 
owners.  Until  the  better  known  case  of  Laura  Bridge- 
man,  who  was  trained  by  Dr.  S.  G.  Howe  of  Boston, 
Julia  Brace  was  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  illustration 
on  record  of  the  extent  to  which  persons  who  are  both 
blind  and  deaf  can  be  relieved  of  some  of  the  conse- 
quences of  their  great  affliction. 

The  Asiatic  cholera  had  ravaged  India  for  several 
successive  years.  In  1832  it  spread  with  frightful  rapid- 
ity across  the  continent  of  Europe,  leaped  the  Atlantic, 
appeared  in  Quebec,  and,  before  the  summer  closed,  its 
desolating  presence  had  brought  dismay  and  death  to 
nearly  every  great  centre  of  population  in  the  United 
States.  Its  movements  were  capricious ;  some  consider- 
able towns  escaped  the  scourge,  while  the  population 
of  others  was  nearly  decimated.  Hartford  was  happily 
spared,  but  throughout  the  season  the  anxiety  of  the 
inhabitants  was  extreme.  Many  of  them  left  their  homes. 
Mrs.  Sigourney's  elegant  suburban  residence,  surrounded 
with  ample  ornamental  grounds,  was  situated  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  Asylum,  and  before  her  departure 
she  begged  Mr.  Barnard  and  his  friend  Bartlett  to  oc- 
cupy it  as  a  protection  against  burglars.  The  young 
men  had  no  fear  of  the  burglars,  and  they  readily  con- 
sented; but  the  frightful  accounts  of  sudden  death  from 
cholera  which  filled  the  newspapers  often  caused  them  a 
feeling  of  dread  least  they  might  be  attacked  at  night  and 
perish  before  they  could  even  call  for  help.  At  length 


76  MEMOIRS  OF 

the  terrible  summer  passed,  and  with  its  close  came  an 
important  change  of  position  to  the  two  young  men.  The 
New  York  Institution  for  the  Instruction  of  the  Deaf  and 
Dumb  was  then  in  process  of  reorganization,  and  they  had 
both  been  invited  to  join  its  corps  of  teachers.  It  had 
been  founded  in  1818,  just  one  year  later  than  the  Hart- 
ford Asylum.  It  had  been  generously  aided  by  the  State 
and  zealously  fostered  by  its  founders.  Its  projector,  Dr. 
Samuel  Akerly,  though  not  himself  a  practical  teacher, 
was  its  principal  manager.  He  was  a  man  of  noble  im- 
pulses, of  active  benevolence,  of  great  perseverance  and 
untiring  industry,  and  was  thoroughly  devoted  to  his 
special  work.  He  had  prepared  and  published  an  elabo- 
rate system  of  progressive  lessons  for  training  the  deaf  to 
the  use  of  language;  but  it  was  his  great  misfortune  to 
believe  so  entirely  in  the  perfection  of  his  theory  as 
to  fancy  that  he  had  nothing  to  learn  from  others. 
He  might  have  reached  a  different  opinion  if  he  had 
attempted  to  work  his  theory  in  his  own  person;  but  as 
he  committed  its  practical  application  to  his  subordinates, 
the  result  was  not  satisfactory.  After  several  years  of 
dissatisfaction  there  arose  a  demand,  which  could  not  be 
resisted,  for  a  complete  reform  of  the  methods  of  the 
institution;  Dr.  Akerly  resigned,  and  the  board  of  man- 
agers proceeded  to  reorganize  the  corps  of  teachers.  In 
1831  they  elected  Mr.  Harvey  Pringle  Peet,  an  accom- 
plished instructor  of  the  American  Asylum  at  Hartford, 
as  principal,  and  they  simultaneously  called  Mr.  Le*on 
Vaysse,  an  equally  accomplished  teacher  from  the  school 
of  Sicard  at  Paris,  to  introduce  and  illustrate  the  latest 
methods  of  the  French  system.  On  taking  office  Mr. 
Peet  was  allowed  carte  blanche  in  the  choice  of  his  assist- 
ants; and  he  resolved  first,  that,  if  possible,  he  would 
have  no  man  who  had  not  been  liberally  educated,  and 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  77 

second,  that  he  would  endeavor  to  have  none  who  had  not 
already  had  some  experience  in  the  art  of  teaching  deaf- 
mutes.  Among  the  first  persons  whom  he  invited  to  join 
him  were  Messrs.  Bartlett  and  Barnard.  The  overture 
was  not  immediately  accepted;  but  they  agreed  to  con- 
sider it.  During  the  latter  part  of  the  summer  of  1832 
they  both  went  to  Sheffield  to  attend  the  marriage  of 
Barnard's  sister  to  the  Hon.  Augustus  Porter  of  Detroit, 
and  after  the  wedding  they  joined  a  party  of  friends  who 
escorted  the  happy  pair  as  far  as  Albany  on  their  western 
journey.  At  Albany  it  occurred  to  them  that  it  would  be 
well  to  return  to  Hartford  by  the  way  of  New  York,  and 
to  avail  themselves  of  that  opportunity  to  visit  the  New 
York  Institution.  They  did  so,  and  the  impression  made 
upon  them  by  the  aspect  of  the  city  at  that  time  was 
never  forgotten.  New  York  was  like  a  city  of  the  dead. 
Business  was  completely  at  a  standstill.  The  streets 
were  deserted.  The  cholera  epidemic  was  over,  but  there 
were  still  sporadic  cases,  and  so  gloomy  did  everything 
appear  that  the  two  young  men  were  sorely  tempted 
to  depart  without  attending  to  the  business  which  had 
brought  them  there.  Only  their  pride  kept  them  from 
making  their  escape.  On  visiting  the  Institution,  how- 
ever, they  were  so  much  pleased  with  its  arrangements 
and  with  the  gentlemen  connected  with  it  that  they  at 
once  resolved  to  accept  the  invitation  to  take  service 
there.  Returning,  therefore,  to  Hartford,  they  resigned 
their  positions  and  were  soon  engaged  in  their  new  duties 
in  New  York. 

New  York,  as  it  was  in  1832,  was  very  different  from 
the  same  city  as  it  appears  in  1892.  To  say  nothing  of 
the  architecture,  the  streets  on  the  East  Side  had  extended 
only  as  far  north  as  about  Thirteenth  Street,  and  there 
in  a  straggling  way.  On  Broadway  there  was  only  one 


78  MEMOIES   OP 

house  above  the  bend  where  Grace  Church  now  stands, 
and  that  solitary  dwelling  was  unoccupied  on  account  of 
malaria.  Union  Square  had  not  been  laid  out ;  the  space 
which  is  now  included  within  it  was  then  occupied  by  a 
rocky  hill.  A  little  northward,  nearly  where  the  Claren- 
don Hotel  now  stands,  was  an  elegant  country  villa  belong- 
ing to  Mr.  Pierson,  a  wealthy  merchant  and  an  earnest 
disciple  of  a  singular  religious  impostor  who  called  him- 
self Matthias,  and  who  was  usually  the  guest  of  Mr.  Pier- 
son.  The  strange  story  of  this  remarkable  man  was  told 
by  Colonel  William  L.  Stone  in  a  small  volume  published 
in  1835.  In  that  vicinity  the  ground  was  all  above  the 
grade  of  the  streets,  which  were  cut  through  the  rock, 
leaving  the  adjacent  building  lots  to  be  reduced  by  their 
owners.  During  the  next  five  years  the  work  of  open- 
ing and  grading  streets  was  carried  as  high  as  Twenty- 
Second  Street.  It  was  not  expected  that  the  city  would 
extend  further,  and  a  sustaining  wall  was  built  on  the 
north  side  of  that  street.  During  the  same  five  years  the 
Harlem  Railway  was  chartered  and  constructed  to  con- 
nect its  terminus  at  Prince  Street  in  the  Bowery  with 
Harlem  Village.  Its  line  passed  on  an  embankment 
through  a  considerable  pond,  which  was  called  Sunfish 
Pond,  not  far  from  what  is  now  Madison  Square.  The 
cut  through  Murray  Hill  and  the  tunnel  at  Yorkville  were 
regarded  as  great  works  of  engineering.  Near  the  pres- 
ent site  of  the  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel  was  the  House  of 
Refuge  for  Juvenile  Delinquents.  Beyond  lay  a  wide 
space  of  land,  uninhabited  and  uncultivated,  and  traversed 
only  by  a  country  road,  from  which,  a  little  south  of  what 
is  now  Fiftieth  Street,  a  rude  wheel-track  led  eastward 
to  the  Institution  of  the  Deaf  and  Dumb,  and  also  to  the 
burial  place  of  the  pauper  dead,  known  as  the  Potter's 
Field. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  79 

The  Institution  was  a  rather  imposing  building  of  con- 
siderable dimensions,  with  a  tasteful  colonnade,  standing 
on  a  slight  elevation,  and  fronting  an  extensive  lawn 
towards  the  south.  It  was  furnished  with  a  small  but 
excellent  library  in  which  were  all  the  important  works 
then  extant  on  the  education  of  deaf-mutes.  The  little 
band  of  teachers  was  composed  of  men  of  spirit  and  intel- 
ligence. With  the  exception  of  M.  Vaysse,  who  had 
been  educated  at  the  College  of  France,  and  Mr.  Gary,  a 
singularly  gifted  graduate  of  Princeton  whose  promising 
career  was  too  early  closed  by  death,  all  of  them  were 
Yale  men :  Peet  the  principal ;  Bartlett,  who  afterwards 
returned  to  the  Hartford  Asylum ;  Barnard ;  Samuel  R. 
Brown,  who  spent  his  later  life  in  the  service  of  the  Mor- 
rison Education  Society  in  Japan;  and  George  E.  Day, 
afterwards  Professor  of  Biblical  Literature  at  Yale. 
These  gentlemen  were  earnestly  devoted  to  the  study  of 
the  principles  and  practice  of  their  profession.  Mr.  Peet 
was  admitted  by  all  of  them  to  be  the  most  accomplished 
master  of  the  sign-language  they  had  ever  known.  M. 
Vaysse  was  thoroughly  versed  in  the  methods  and  the 
philosophy  of  the  French  institution.  Mr.  Bartlett  was 
peculiarly  happy  in  his  practical  teaching  in  the  class-room. 
Messrs.  Day,  Gary,  and  Barnard  had  special  aptitudes 
for  the  study  of  principles.  Remote  as  they  were  from 
ordinary  society,  it  was  fortunate  that  they  were  congen- 
ial to  each  other,  and  that  they  found  their  association 
with  each  other  to  be  both  stimulating  and  agreeable.  In 
the  daily  routine  of  their  work  there  was  nothing  unusual. 
The  ordinary  studies  of  the  pupils  were  pursued  in  the 
mornings  and  afternoons,  after  which  they  were  employed 
in  learning  some  handicraft  under  the  instruction  of 
skilled  mechanics.  The  evenings  were  spent  in  large 
study  rooms.  Week  by  week  one  of  the  teachers  was 


80  MEMOIRS   OF 

appointed  to  see  that  this  routine  was  duly  followed,  to 
conduct  the  chapel  services  and  to  superintend  the  even- 
ing studies.  The  evening  duty  was  particularly  laborious 
on  account  of  the  painful  restlessness  of  the  male  pupils, 
which  exceeded  anything  that  Mr.  Barnard  had  yet  seen. 
The  teachers  had  few  recreations  except  music,  of  which 
Barnard  was  passionately  fond.  His  hearing,  if  it  had 
not  improved,  had  grown  no  worse  since  he  had  left  New 
Haven ;  and  although  his  infirmity  was  a  painful  embar- 
rassment to  him  throughout  his  life,  his  worst  fears  were 
never  realized,  since  it  did  not  disqualify  him  for  the  pro- 
fession of  a  teacher.  In  the  study  of  music  he  took  great 
satisfaction.  He  practised  on  the  piano  as  much  as  he 
could,  but  his  favorite  instrument  was  the  flute.  His 
brother  John  was  an  expert  on  the  same  instrument,  and 
as  he  was  then  engaged  as  a  lieutenant  of  engineers  in  the 
construction  of  Fort  Schuyler  near  the  head  of  Long 
Island  Sound,  he  usually  spent  his  Saturdays  and  Sun- 
days with  Frederick  at  the  Institution.  Then  the  young 
men  would  organize  concerts,  with  none  but  themselves 
for  an  audience.  Vaysse  was  a  vocalist  of  some  preten- 
sions. Brown  was  an  excellent  tenor.  Barnard  was  a 
basso  profondo.  Bartlett  played  the  organ  and  the  vio- 
loncello, and  on  occasion  could  take  the  part  of  a  con- 
tralto. Those  were  the  earliest  days  of  the  opera  in  New 
York,  and  the  first  performance  took  place  in  the  old 
Park  Theatre  in  Park  Row,  directly  opposite  the  site  of 
the  present  post-office.  The  distance  from  the  Institution 
was  about  three  miles  and  a  half,  and  in  1832  there  were 
neither  tram-cars  nor  omnibuses ;  yet  the  whole  staff, 
with  the  sole  exception  of  Mr.  Peet,  would  often  walk 
to  the  theatre,  returning  to  the  Institution  consider- 
ably after  midnight.  On  their  homeward  way  they 
would  halt  in  "the  wild  untenanted  waste  at  the  top 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  81 

of  Murray  Hill"  to  rest  and  refresh  themselves  with 
snatches  of  song. 

A  cheerful,  innocent,  and  brotherly  life  that  of  the 
young  teachers  of  the  deaf  and  dumb  seems  to  have  been; 
but  it  was  not  all,  by  any  means,  devoted  to  routine  duty 
and  the  study  of  music.  Most  of  them,  and  Barnard 
most  of  all,  were  attracted  to  scientific  investigations. 
During  the  five  years  of  his  residence  at  the  Institution 
numerous  atmospheric  and  celestial  phenomena  occurred 
which  could  not  fail  to  attract  his  interest,  and  which 
offered  opportunities  for  varied  applications  of  his  mathe- 
matical knowledge.  There  were  frequent  electrical  dis- 
plays on  a  scale  of  marvellous  splendor,  such  as  he  never 
saw  equalled  elsewhere.  "  In  the  absence  of  rain,  and  in 
intervals  between  showers,  while  the  sky  was  totally  over- 
cast with  dense  clouds,  there  would  occur  a  continuous 
succession  of  dazzling  flashes  of  lightning,  breaking  out 
with  instantaneous  suddenness  in  every  quarter  of  the 
heavens,  and  darting  fiery  zig-zags  which  seemed  to  chase 
each  other,  sometimes  for  an  hour  or  more  together, 
all  over  the  celestial  arch."  This,  too,  as  he  has 
recorded, 

was  one  of  the  periods  of  maximum  frequency  and  maximum 
brilliancy  of  the  aurora  borealis,  periods  which,  whether  recur- 
ring regularly  or  not,  do  certainly  occur  at  wide  intervals.  I 
kept  up,  in  concert  with  observers  elsewhere,  and  especially 
with  Edward  L.  Herrick,  Esq.,  of  New  Haven,  an  assiduous 
observation  of  these  phenomena,  and  was  rewarded  by  the 
enjoyment  of  some  of  the  most  magnificent  displays  of  celes- 
tial chromatics  that  man  has  ever  been  permitted  to  witness. 
Of  one  of  the  most  remarkable  of  these  displays,  which  occurred 
as  late  as  1837,  I  attempted  a  descriptive  account  for  publica- 
tion, accompanied  by  some  estimates  of  the  height  of  the  me- 
teor above  the  earth,  as  deduced  from  a  comparison  of  the 
various  aspects  of  the  synchronous  phases  which  had  been  ob- 


82  MEMOIRS  OF 

served  from  many  widely  distant  points.  The  publication  of 
this  paper  incidentally  became  the  occasion  of  the  termination 
of  my  connection  with  the  Institution  and  of  my  entrance  upon 
a  new  field  of  labor  in  a  distant  State. 

Barnard  unfortunately  missed  seeing  the  famous  star- 
shower  of  November,  1832.  It  was  seen  by  most  of  his 
associates  with  mingled  admiration  and  alarm,  but  in  their 
excitement  they  did  not  think  to  call  him ;  he  slept  quietly 
during  the  whole  time  that  the  phenomenon  lasted,  and 
when  he  heard  of  the  almost  appalling  grandeur  of  the 
spectacle,  he  could  hardly  forgive  their  negligence.  His 
friend  Herrick  at  New  Haven  had  been  more  fortunate, 
and  was  one  of  the  first  to  put  forth  the  hypothesis  that 
these  meteoric  showers  are  periodic  and  that  their  cause 
is  probably  cosmical.  By  a  laborious  investigation  of  old 
records  he  satisfied  himself  that  there  is  an  unusual  abun- 
dance of  shooting  stars,  if  not  literally  of  star-showers, 
at  other  times  than  the  month  of  November,  and  he  indi- 
cated the  months  of  April  and  August  as  the  times  at 
which  their  appearance  is  most  remarkable.  Both  of 
these  conclusions  have  since  been  verified.  Besides  the 
brochure  above  mentioned,  Barnard  made  several  notable 
contributions,  chiefly  of  a  scientific  nature,  to  the  periodi- 
cal literature  of  the  day,  and  during  the  latter  part  of  his 
service  at  the  institution  he  published  a  work  on  the  sign- 
language,  entitled  "Analytic  Grammar,  with  Symbolic 
Illustrations,"  in  which  he  developed  the  system  of  Sicard 
by  modifying  the  symbols  so  as  to  indicate  cases,  moods, 
and  tenses,  and  in  fact  to  exhibit  the  complete  grammati- 
cal structure  of  sentences  without  the  use  of  words. 
Soon  after  its  publication  the  stereotype  plates  of  this 
work  were  destroyed  by  fire,  and  after  the  first  edition 
had  been  exhausted,  it  fell  into  disuse.  Copies  of  it  have 
been  eagerly  sought  by  instructors  of  the  deaf  and  dumb 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  83 

in  recent  years,  and  so  it  has  continued  to  be  useful  to 
the  present  time. 

Throughout  these  years  Mr.  Barnard  was  a  regular 
attendant  at  St.  Thomas'  Church  at  the  corner  of  Broad- 
way and  Houston  Street.  Its  rector  was  Dr.  Francis  L. 
Hawks,  who  was  then  at  the  zenith  of  his  fame  and  power 
as  a  pulpit  orator,  and  under  his  ministry  it  is  believed 
that  Barnard  was  confirmed.  Eighteen  months  before  he 
left  New  York,  he  became  a  candidate  for  holy  orders 
under  Bishop  Benjamin  T.  Onderdonk ;  not  that  he  had 
any  intention  or  expectation  of  engaging  in  the  parochial 
ministry,  but  because  it  was  thought  that  to  be  clothed 
with  the  ministerial  character  would  contribute  to  his 
usefulness  in  the  profession  of  a  teacher,  to  which  he 
had  now  definitively  given  himself.  When  he  left  New 
York  in  1837  his  candidature  lapsed,  and  it  was  many 
years  before  it  was  renewed  under  Bishop  Cobbs  of 
Alabama. 

In  the  autumn  of  1837  the  remarkable  investigations 
of  Professor  Faraday  at  the  Royal  Institution  in  London 
had  excited  a  general  and  lively  interest  in  electro-mag- 
netism on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  and  Barnard  was 
engaged  to  write  an  article  on  that  subject  for  a  magazine 
conducted  by  Park  Benjamin.  In  the  preparation  of  his 
article  he  found  it  necessary  to  visit  New  Haven  in  order 
to  obtain  certain  information  which  was  to  be  had  only 
in  the  library  of  his  old  friend  and  instructor,  Professor 
Silliman.  Having  completed  his  work,  he  walked  to  the 
steamer  to  return  to  New  York  in  company  with  Mr. 
Gregory  Pericaris,  an  accomplished  Greek  gentleman  who 
had  been  driven  from  his  home  in  Scio  during  the  Greek 
war  of  independence.  As  they  approached  the  steamer, 
they  observed  Dr.  Day,  the  President  of  Yale  College, 
in  company  with  another  gentleman,  whom  Mr.  Pericaris 


84  MEMOIRS   OF 

recognized  as  Dr.  Basil  Manly,  a  distinguished  Baptist 
clergyman  of  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  who  had  re- 
cently been  elected  to  the  presidency  of  the  University 
of  Alabama.  Barnard  did  not  fail  to  observe  with  satis- 
faction that  Dr.  Manly  was  unconventional  enough  to 
carry  his  own  valise,  an  act  which  would  have  been 
deemed  highly  improper  for  a  gentleman  in  Charleston. 
The  two  college  presidents  were  likewise  on  their  way  to 
New  York,  and  Barnard  gladly  accepted  the  offer  of  Mr. 
Pericaris  to  introduce  him  to  President  Manly.  With 
President  Day,  of  course,  he  was  already  acquainted. 

During  the  trip  to  New  York  Dr.  Manly  had  consid- 
erable conversation  with  Barnard,  whose  paper  on  the 
aurora  he  had  read  with  interest.  He  explained  that 
the  University  of  Alabama  had  been  in  existence  only 
about  six  years  when  it  was  completely  broken  up  by  the 
tumultuous  insubordination  of  the  students,  and  every 
member  of  the  Faculty  had  either  resigned  or  been 
removed.  His  object  in  visiting  the  North,  he  said,  was 
to  consult  with  experienced  educators,  and  particularly 
with  the  presidents  of  Yale  and  Harvard,  on  the  best 
methods  of  reorganizing  the  institution,  and  to  induce 
competent  men  to  become  candidates  for  the  various 
professorships.  He  had  found  suitable  men  to  nominate 
to  the  Board  of  Trustees  as  candidates  for  all  the  chairs 
except  that  of  English  Literature,  and  he  frankly  asked 
Barnard  how  he  would  like  to  undertake  that  depart- 
ment. Barnard  replied  that  his  preference  had  always 
been  for  scientific  studies,  and  that  he  would  more  will- 
ingly have  accepted  the  chair  of  Mathematics  or  Natural 
Philosophy.  Dr.  Manly  suggested  to  him  that  he  might 
at  least  send  on  his  testimonials.  The  testimonials  were 
forwarded,  and  two  months  later  Barnard  received  from 
Governor  Arthur  P.  Bagley,  ex  officio  President  of  the 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  85 

Board  of  Trustees  of  the  University  of  Alabama,  a  formal 
announcement  of  his  election  to  the  Professorship  of 
Mathematics  and  Natural  Philosophy,  with  an  urgent 
request  that  he  would  enter  on  his  work  without  delay. 
For  this  result  of  his  candidature  he  was  doubtless 
indebted  to  the  favorable  account  of  him  which  had  been 
personally  given  to  Dr.  Manly  by  Dr.  Day. 

While  he  was  ready  and  glad  to  accept  the  position 
offered  him,  it  was  unfortunately  not  possible  for  him 
to  go  at  once  to  Alabama,  as  he  had  just  made  a  positive 
engagement  to  present  the  claims  of  the  deaf  and  dumb 
to  the  Legislature  of  Virginia.  Accordingly,  before  go- 
ing to  the  further  South,  he  visited  Richmond,  taking 
with  him  half  a  dozen  of  the  most  proficient  pupils  in 
the  New  York  Institution.  Several  public  exhibitions 
were  given  before  the  Legislature  and  citizens  of  Rich- 
mond in  exemplification  of  the  best  methods  and  results 
of  the  scientific  instruction  of  deaf-mutes,  and  the  result 
was  the  passage  of  an  act  establishing  an  Institution 
for  the  Deaf  and  Dumb  at  Staunton,  Virginia.  Thus 
a  month  passed  before  Barnard  could  leave  New  York, 
and  as  no  railways  had  yet  been  constructed  to  connect 
the  South  with  the  North,  he  was  obliged  to  take  passage 
on  a  sailing-vessel  to  Mobile.  His  voyage  lasted  nearly 
three  weeks,  and  when  he  arrived  at  Mobile  he  found 
that  very  slight  hopes  of  the  success  of  the  University 
were  entertained  by  the  citizens  of  Alabama.  One  of 
the  trustees  on  whom  he  called  bluntly  said  to  him, 
"You  will  never  be  able  to  govern  those  boys  at  Tus- 
kaloosa  while  the  world  stands."  Barnard  was  not  dis- 
couraged, however,  believing,  as  he  did,  that  he  knew 
more  of  the  art  of  governing  boys  and  young  men  than 
the  trustee  either  knew  or  could  know.  He  went,  there- 
fore, in  good  heart  and  hope  to  Tuskaloosa,  arriving 


86  MEMOIRS  OP 

there  about  the  first  of  March  ;  and  although  there  were 
serious  difficulties  of  discipline  while  he  was  connected 
with  the  University,  there  were  none  which  directly  con- 
cerned himself,  and  none  which  he  was  not  more  or  less 
useful  in  solving. 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD 

PROFESSOR     OF     MATHEMATICS     AND     NATURAL 

PHILOSOPHY     IN     THE     UNIVERSITY 

OF     ALABAMA 

1848 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  89 

former  having  the  advantage  of  being  nearer  the  geographi- 
cal centre  of  the  State.  The  claims  of  Selma  were  urged 
by  one  of  its  advocates  in  a  rather  curious  way.  He 
caused  a  metallic  plate  to  be  cut  in  the  form  of  a  map 
of  the  State  and  showed  that  the  plate  would  exactly 
balance  on  a  point  corresponding  with  the  position  of 
Selma  on  the  map.  His  argument,  ingenious  as  it  was, 
did  not  prevail,  and  on  a  popular  vote  Montgomery  was 
chosen  as  the  capital  by  a  large  majority.  The  substan- 
tial edifice  which  had  been  used  as  a  State-House  was 
given  by  the  Legislature  to  the  University,  but  little 
use  was  made  of  it  for  a  considerable  time.  Professor 
Barnard  used  it,  however,  for  the  purpose  of  repeating 
the  interesting  experiment  of  Foucault,  demonstrating 
the  fact  of  the  earth's  rotation  by  means  of  a  pendulum. 
From  the  dome  of  the  building  he  suspended  a  pendu- 
lum ninety  feet  long.  The  bob  was  a  leaden  globe,  eight 
inches  in  diameter,  which  he  turned  on  the  lathe  with  his 
own  hand  to  a  perfect  sphere,  and  suspended  by  a  steel 
piano-wire  on  knife-edges  acting  on  the  principle  of  the 
universal  joint.  The  editor  of  one  of  the  journals  of 
Tuskaloosa  was  unwise  enough  to  ridicule  the  experi- 
ment, but  the  only  effect  of  his  satire  was  to  advertise 
it  to  the  public.  All  classes  of  citizens  attended  to 
observe  it  for  themselves,  and  their  interest  in  the  ex- 
periment was  fairly  equalled  by  their  admiration  of  the 
professor  by  whom  it  was  conducted. 

After  he  became  Professor  of  Chemistry,  Barnard  paid 
considerable  attention  to  photography,  and  while  the 
daguerreotype  process  was  still  in  general  use,  he  dis- 
covered a  method  of  accelerating  the  luminous  impres- 
sions by  the  use  of  gaseous  chlorine.  He  also  invented  a 
method  of  producing  stereopticon  plates  for  binocular 
vision,  both  impressions  of  the  pair  of  plates  being  made 


90  MEMOIRS   OF 

at  a  single  exposure.  Specimens  of  his  invention  were 
sent  to  Philadelphia  for  exhibition  at  a  fair  of  the  Frank- 
lin Institute,  but  unfortunately  too  late  for  entry.  He 
had  the  satisfaction,  nevertheless,  to  be  assured  by  Pro- 
fessor Dana  of  New  Haven,  who  was  chairman  of  the 
jury,  that  his  exhibit  would  undoubtedly  have  received 
the  first  prize,  if  it  had  arrived  in  time.  Stimulated 
by  this  encouragement,  he  threw  himself  more  enthusi- 
astically than  ever  into  the  study  of  photography,  estab- 
lished a  gallery  for  taking  portraits,  and  devoted  to  it 
all  the  time  he  could  spare  from  his  academic  duties. 
Though  he  had  a  partner  in  this  enterprise,  a  friend  has 
recorded  that  "he  went  into  the  business  with  sleeves 
rolled  up,  and  manipulated  the  camera  with  such  skill 
as  to  produce  really  fine  specimens  of  the  art,  so  that 
the  faces  of  the  belles  and  beaux  of  Tuskaloosa  were 
speedily  duplicated  to  the  infinite  gratification  of  young 
and  old.  The  interest  he  took  in  such  things  as  these, 
when  he  did  take  hold  of  them,  was  absorbing,  and  this 
he  made  no  effort  to  conceal." 

During  his  sixteen  or  seventeen  years  of  constant  service 
in  Tuskaloosa,  it  frequently  happened  that  one  or  other 
of  the  members  of  the  Faculty  was  absent  or  temporarily 
disabled,  and  in  every  such  case  Professor  Barnard  was 
ready  to  take  additional  duty.  On  two  several  occasions 
the  chair  of  English  Literature  remained  vacant  for  a 
whole  year,  and  in  both  instances  he  supplied  the  vacancy 
without  allowing  the  additional  labor  to  interfere  with  the 
work  of  his  own  department.  At  the  same  time  he  was 
actively  engaged  in  journalism,  and  he  seems  to  have 
regarded  his  editorial  occupation  in  the  light  of  an  amuse- 
ment. Tuskaloosa  had  the  questionable  advantage  of  two 
political  newspapers,  severally  representing  the  two  great 
political  parties  of  the  time.  In  his  political  principles 


FREDERICK  A.  P.   BARNARD  91 

Barnard  was  an  ardent  Whig,  and  when  Mr.  Miller, 
editor  of  The  Monitor,  the  leading  organ  of  that  party 
in  Middle  Alabama,  retired  from  his  position  to  write  a 
biographical  work  on  The  Bench  and  Bar  of  Georgia, 
Professor  Barnard  became,  and  for  several  years  remained, 
the  actual  but  unavowed  editor  of  the  paper.  It  is  said 
that  The  Monitor  was  never  so  sprightly  or  so  prosperous 
as  under  his  administration.  He  certainly  took  every 
means  to  make  it  so,  and  he  generously  contrived  to  make 
the  prosperity  of  his  own  publication  contribute  to  that  of 
its  antagonist.  In  fact,  he  wrote  for  both,  and  it  often 
happened  that  the  most  trenchant  attacks  of  the  Demo- 
cratic organ  upon  the  principles  and  conduct  of  the  Whig 
party  were  really  from  the  pen  of  the  editor  of  The  Monitor, 
who  would  proceed  next  week  to  repel  his  own  assault 
and  follow  it  up  with  a  caustic  criticism  of  the  unprinci- 
pled misconduct  of  the  Democratic  party.  This  humorous 
mystification  was  so  admirably  managed,  and  the  secret 
of  it  was  so  thoroughly  well  kept,  as  never  to  be  sus- 
pected by  the  readers  of  the  two  papers.  During  the 
sessions  of  the  Legislature  at  Montgomery,  another  harm- 
less deception  was  practised  on  the  rural  politicians  of 
Middle  Alabama.  The  Montgomery  newspapers  of  both 
parties  were  published  daily;  the  Tuskaloosa  papers  were 
published  weekly.  With  the  aid  of  the  Montgomery 
papers,  Barnard  used  to  prepare  complete  summaries  of 
the  transactions  of  the  Legislature  in  the  form  of  letters, 
dated  from  Montgomery,  which  duly  appeared  in  each 
of  the  Tuskaloosa  papers,  with  political  speculations  and 
forecasts  of  probabilities  colored  to  suit  the  prepossessions 
of  their  several  supporters.  It  was  often  a  source  of 
humorous  satisfaction  to  Barnard  to  hear  his  fellow- 
citizens  of  both  parties  remark  that  the  weekly  corre- 
spondence of  the  papers  in  Tuskaloosa  gave  them  a  clearer 


92  MEMOIRS   OF 

understanding  of  the  movements  of  the  political  world 
than  they  could  ever  gather  from  the  more  voluminous 
reports  of  the  Montgomery  daily  newspapers! 

In  1845,  a  literary  monthly  magazine,  called  The  South- 
ron, was  established  at  Tuskaloosa,  by  the  Hon.  Judge 
A.  B.  Meek,  a  graduate  of  the  University  of  Alabama, 
and  a  poet  of  considerable  local  reputation.  He  was 
assisted  in  his  enterprise  by  several  well-known  writers, 
and  among  them  by  the  Hon.  W.  R.  Smith,  a  member  of 
Congress  from  that  district,  who,  at  one  time  after  the 
war,  became  President  of  the  University.  To  this  maga- 
zine Professor  Barnard  was  a  large  contributor  of  prose 
and  verse,  and  even  his  prose  seems  to  have  been  made 
the  vehicle  of  poesy.  In  the  specimens  of  his  composition 
which  have  been  preserved,  there  may  be  nothing  to  indi- 
cate poetic  genius  of  a  high  order,  but  there  is  more  than 
enough  to  prove  that  if  he  had  chosen  literature  as  a  pro- 
fession, he  might  have  taken  high  rank  among  the  writers 
of  his  country.  Three  short  pieces  will  suffice  to  illustrate 
his  facility  in  versification.  The  first  is  a  graceful  sonnet 

entitled 

A  VALENTINE. 

As  one  who  loveth  on  the  stars  to  gaze, 

Oft  chooseth  out  the  fairest  for  his  own, 
His  rapt  eye  nightly  feeding  on  its  blaze, 

With  a  deep  gladness  known  to  him  alone ; 

Nor  heedeth  from  how  far  its  light  hath  shone, 
And  ever  must,  though  soft  it  round  him  plays : 

Since  to  its  worship  so  his  heart  hath  grown, 

He  would  not  snatch  it  from  its  azure  throne, 
To  mingle  earth's  pollution  with  its  rays : 
Thus  beauty's  galaxy  mine  eye  surveys, 

Yet,  of  all  fair  forms,  f asteneth  on  thine  ; 
Therefore  do  I,  to  cheer  my  weary  days, 
Make  thee,  sweet  stranger,  goddess  of  my  lays, 

And  choose  thee  out  to  be  my  Valentine. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  93 

The  second  is  a  rhapsody,  the  occasion  of  which  is  told 
as  follows : 

Miss  Trifle  had  told  me  —  as  all  young  ladies,  I  believe, 
tell  all  young  gentlemen  who  indulge  in  protestations  of 
eternal  love  and  eternal  —  what  is  the  word?  constancy  — 
that  if  I  were  to  return  to  Higginsport,  or  elsewhere  absent 
myself  for  a  fortnight,  I  should  forget  that  there  was  such  a 
being  as  she  on  two  —  two  feet  —  in  all  the  world.  Where- 
upon I  gallantly  responded : 

"  Forget  thee  !  "    Bid  the  earth  forget 

Its  viewless  track  around  the  sun  ; 
Forget  thee  !  on  the  dial  let 

The  shadow  cease  its  course  to  run. 

"  Forget  thee  ! "    Bid  the  restless  sea 

Forget  to  beat  upon  the  shore ; 
Or  bid  the  honey-seeking  bee 

Gather  the  sweets  he  loves,  no  more. 

"  Forget  thee  ! "    Bid  the  needle  cease 

Its  silent  homage  to  the  pole ; 
Or  waters,  in  their  glad  release, 

From  ice- clad  mountain-tops  to  rolL 

Bid  the  young  bud  forget  to  spread 

Its  petals  in  the  sunny  hour  ; 
Or  summer  eves  forget  to  shed 

Their  dews  upon  the  tender  flower. 

Bid  yon  bright  stars,  that  have  their  birth 

Far  in  immensity  of  blue, 
That  nightly  smile  on  sleeping  earth 

And  light  up  diamonds  in  the  dew— 

Yea !  bid  them  all  — in  darkness  set  — 

Cease  evermore  the  world  to  bless  ; 
Yet  tell  not  me  I  may  forget ; 

I  hate  that  word—forgetfulness. 

No  trifle  ever  grieved  me  more  than  the  wasteful  expen- 
diture of  these  stanzas.  However,  it  served  me  right;  for 
there  was  not  a  word  of  truth  in  the  whole. 


94  MEMOIRS   OP 

The  "Ode  to  a  Jack-knife"  occurs  in  a  story,  the  hero  of 
which  had  discovered  that  clumsy  piece  of  cutlery  in  his 
lady's  work-box,  and  begged  her  to  tell  him  to  what  use 
such  fingers  as  hers  could  apply  such  an  instrument. 

"  <  I  will  answer  this  one  question  [she  said]  and  then,  Jerry, 
unless  you  can  learn  to  cease  meddling,  I  shall  insist  on  your 
putting  a  wall  between  us,  in  fact.  That  knife  is  used  to  crimp 
ruffles.  Be  content  with  that,  and  sit  farther  away  at  once.' 

"In  my  haste,  I  neglected  to  replace  the  jack-knife  in  the 
work-box,  but  presently  after,  in  a  fit  of  absence,  consigned  it 
to  my  own  pocket. 

"  That  night  I  seized  my  pen,  and  then  and  there,  <  accoutred 
as  I  was/  I  sat  me  down  and  gave  vent  to  my  '  thick-coming 
fancies '  in  an  effusion  which  I  long  after  regarded  as  my  chef 
d'oeuvre.  I  mingled  in  it  no  strain  of  earthly  love  —  it  was  all 
grandeur  and  sublimity  —  the  outpouring  of  my  lofty  concep- 
tions of  the  glorious  destiny  which  had  befallen  that  humble, 
unpretending  jack-knife.  The  reader  shall  have  an  oppor- 
tunity of  judging  of  the  merits  of  my  performance.  Indeed, 
I  think  it  important  to  insert  the  whole  production  in  this 
place,  inasmuch  as  it  was  made  the  subject  of  one  of  the  most 
atrocious  attacks  upon  my  literary  character,  in  that  pestilent 
journal  the  Doolittle  Hollow  Orb  of  Day,  it  has  ever  been  my 
lot  to  undergo. 

"  Considering  the  grandeur  of  effect  it  was  my  purpose  to 
produce,  I  adopted  a  stanza  only  employed  by  the  great  poets 
in  treating  subjects  of  a  certain  elevation;  and  I  aimed,  I 
trust  not  unsuccessfully,  at  combining  majesty  of  movement 
with  majesty  of  thought  in  the  following 

ODE  TO  A  JACK-KNIFE. 
"  Time  was  when  thou  wast  sleeping  in  the  ore, 
And  when  the  massive  haft  that  decks  thee  now, 
In  the  proud  antler,  on  his  prouder  brow, 
Some  noble  tenant  of  the  forest  bore. 

*'  Man  came  and  digged  thee  out  —  then  fashion'd  thee 
Into  a  jack-knife,  such  as  boors  employ 
Virginian  weed  to  cut,  or  truant  boy 
Th'  inglorious  birch  to  sever  from  the  tree. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  95 

"  Yet  thou  escapes!  such  ignoble  fate, 

No  vulgar  pocket  doth  thy  prison  make, 
But  fingers  whiter  than  the  snowy  flake 
Confine  thee,  as  the  cambric's  folds  they  plait. 

"  Yet,  favor'd  jack-knife,  all  unconscious  still 
And  senseless  to  thy  happy  lot  art  thou ; 
Nor  ever  know'st — like  him  who  on  thee  now 
Is  sadly  gazing  —  either  joy  or  ill. 

"  No  heart  is  throbbing  in  that  iron  breast, 

No  soul,  with  ceaseless  stragglings  to  be  free 
And  robe  itself  in  immortality  — 
Its  heavenly  birthright  —  robs  thee  of  thy  rest. 

"  Suns  rise  and  set,  and  seasons  come  and  go, 
And  mighty  empires  totter  to  their  fall, 
And  blood-stained  despots  triumph  — yet  of  all 
Thou'rt  heedless  ;  would  I  were  a  jack-knife,  too  ! " 

These  editorial  and  literary  labors  were  merely  pas- 
times to  Professor  Barnard,  or,  at  most,  exercises  prepar- 
atory to  the  more  important  work  to  which  he  seems 
always  to  have  looked  forward,  and  valuable  because  of 
the  facility  and  dexterity  in  the  use  of  his  powers  to  which 
they  contributed.  In  the  same  spirit  of  half  playful  and 
half  serious  self -discipline  he  availed  himself  of  such  oppor- 
tunities as  occurred  to  him  for  exercise  in  public  speaking. 
The  first  occasion  on  which  he  appeared  as  an  orator  was 
the  Feast  of  St.  John  the  Baptist,  1841,  when  he  delivered 
an  address  to  the  Masonic  Lodge  of  Tuskaloosa  on  "  The 
Claims  of  Masonry  to  the  Respect  and  Veneration  of 
Mankind."  This  address  is  noteworthy  for  its  intrinsic 
merit,  and  not  only  on  account  of  its  place  in  his  career. 
Considered  simply  as  a  composition,  it  is  singularly 
chaste;  perhaps,  indeed,  it  is  the  most  strictly  classical 
production  of  his  pen;  as  an  apology  for  the  Masonic 
Order  it  is  admirable ;  and,  from  first  to  last,  it  exhibits 
a  mastery  of  the  art  of  lucid  statement,  a  felicity  and 


96  MEMOIRS   OF 

copiousness  of  illustration,  and  a  rich  vein  of  humorous 
irony  which  would  have  made  him  both  admired  and 
dreaded  either  in  the  senate  or  in  the  forum.  In  the 
opening  of  this  address,  he  declines  to  consider  the  mali- 
cious and  frivolous  objections  alleged  against  the  Masonic 
Order,  and  proceeds  at  once  to  demand  for  it  the  homage 
of  respect  and  veneration  on  the  ground  of  "its  high 
antiquity,  of  the  pure  and  exalted  nature  of  its  designs, 
and  of  the  blameless  characters,  the  lofty  attainments 
and  the  widespread  celebrity  of  many  of  its  officers  and 
members  in  every  age." 

As  to  its  antiquity,  he  said  that  the  innumerable  efforts 
to  discredit  Masonic  tradition,  by  ascribing  the  origin  of 
the  order  to  the  Eleusinian  Mysteries,  the  Egyptian 
Priesthoods,  the  British  Druids,  the  Dionysian  Archi- 
tects, the  Pythagorean  Fraternities,  the  Hebrew  Essenes, 
and  the  Roman  Workmen's  Colleges,  at  least  conceded 
the  antiquity  of  the  Masonic  institutions,  and  at  the  same 
time  relieved  the  advocates  of  Masonry  of  the  necessity 
of  refuting  them,  since  they  were  reciprocally  destructive. 
He  drily  suggested  that  since  the  irreconcilable  differences 
of  its  opponents  prove  that  it  is  somewhat  difficult  for  the 
uninitiated  to  learn  the  truth  of  the  matter,  it  may  be 
barely  possible  that  the  traditions  of  the  order  are  more 
trustworthy  than  the  speculations  of  outsiders.  Tradition, 
he  argued,  is  a  necessary  and  inseparable  adjunct  of  every 
ancient  institution,  and  he  asked  whether  it  may  not  be 
"just  possible  that  truth  will  descend  as  readily  as  fable?" 
In  Masonic  tradition  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  truth, 
and  not  fable,  has  been  handed  down  from  age  to  age, 
for  otherwise  it  is  impossible  to  explain  the  acknowledged 
fact  that  the  institutions  of  the  order,  as  they  have  been 
preserved  in  widely  separated  regions  and  in  the  most 
various  civilizations,  remain  to  this  day  everywhere  sub- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  97 

stantially  the  same.  He  did  not  assert  that  the  antiquity 
of  an  institution  is  a  conclusive  proof  of  its  merit;  but 
he  justified  the  general  judgment  of  mankind  that  insti- 
tutions which  are  unquestionably  ancient  are  likewise 
venerable. 

The  probabilities  [he  said]  are  in  favor  of  whatever  has 
stood  the  test  of  time.  If  in  the  multitude  of  counsellors 
there  is  safety,  it  may  be  presumed  that  in  the  unvarying 
accord  of  numberless  judgments  there  is  ground  for  anticipat- 
ing the  truth.  What  has  been  received  by  generation  after 
generation  without  question  or  dispute,  is  supported  by  a  vast 
weight  of  authority  and  is  corroborated  by  the  results  of  ex- 
perience. Talk  to  an  Englishman  of  the  evils  of  monarchy, 
and  he  will  meet  you  with  the  inquiry,  "  Has  not  ours  worked 
well  ?  "  Predict  anarchy  to  an  American,  from  the  vast  power 
vested  in  the  people  of  the  republic,  and  he  will  ask,  "  Does 
not  our  past  history  prove  your  apprehension  to  be  ground- 
less ? "  It  is  thus  that  whatever  has  stood  the  test  of  time 
commands,  and,  in  general,  justly,  the  confidence  of  mankind. 

But  if  mere  antiquity  thus  creates  a  presumption  in 
favor  of  an  institution,  the  presumption  is  immensely 
strengthened  if  an  unquestionably  ancient  institution  has 
been  subjected  to  many  and  bitter  persecutions.  Nothing 
that  is  not  intrinsically  excellent  can  withstand  every  sort 
of  opposition.  Error  may  make  head  for  a  time;  it  may 
be  proof  against  one  or  another  weapon  of  its  adversaries ; 
but  there  is  no  error  which  may  not  be  successfully 
assailed  in  some  point.  Masonry  has  been  assailed  at  all 
points;  by  irresponsible  power,  inspired  with  jealousy, 
hate,  anger,  caprice,  and  unrestrained  by  any  sentiment 
of  right,  humanity,  or  decency ;  by  gloomy  supersti- 
tion, which  paralyzes  the  reason  and  converts  the  highest 
endowment  of  the  race  into  an  instrument  of  delusion  and 
terror;  by  popular  prejudice;  by  political  passions;  by 


98  MEMOIRS  OF 

ridicule,  "a  weapon  which,  assailing  man  in  his  weakest 
point,  often  shames  him  into  abandoning  that  from  which 
the  dread  of  death  could  not  have  driven  him."  By  all 
of  these  the  institution  of  Masonry  has  been  attacked. 
It  has  by  no  means  escaped  unscathed;  and  yet,  "like 
Christianity,  though  often  fearfully  wounded,  it  has  not 
been  wounded  to  the  death.  Thus  it  has  proved  itself  to 
be  possessed  of  an  indestructible  principle  of  vitality 
which  demonstrates  its  inherent  excellence  and  vindicates 
its  claim  to  the  respect  and  veneration  of  mankind." 

The  secret  of  the  indestructible  permanence  of  Masonry, 
Professor  Barnard  continued,  is  to  be  found  in  the  objects 
for  which  it  was  instituted,  which  were  and  are  the  culti- 
vation of  science,  the  observance  of  a  pure  morality,  and 
the  practice  of  brotherly  love  and  fraternal  charity.  It  is 
incredible  that  so  widespread  an  institution  should  have 
been  able  to  maintain  itself  age  after  age  in  the  face  of 
relentless  persecution,  if  it  had  not  in  some  good  degree 
accomplished  the  objects  of  its  erection.  The  pretence 
that  it  has  had  other  and  more  sinister  objects  is  without 
foundation.  "  If  it  has  ever  been  the  enemy  of  social  or 
political  order,  point  to  the  nation  it  has  revolutionized  — 
name  the  monarch  it  has  dethroned !  If  it  has  ever  been 
the  insidious  foe  of  religion  or  of  the  Church,  instance  the 
sacrilege  it  has  perpetrated,  tell  us  the  temples  it  has 
made  desolate!  "  The  members  of  the  order  themselves 
best  know  how  its  aspirations  are  fostered  and  how  largely 
its  sacred  objects  are  pursued.  It  is  too  true  that  not  all 
Masons  are  virtuous  ;  but  if  that  fact  were  sufficient  to 
condemn  the  order,  then  the  Christian  Church  must  be 
condemned  because  it  fails  to  make  all  its  members  sober, 
righteous,  and  godly  men.  It  is  true,  too,  that  the  duties 
which  Masonry  cultivates  and  enforces  are  natural  duties; 
but  the  Masonic  Society  is  not  therefore  to  be  set  down  as 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  99 

useless.  Rather  the  reverse,  since  it  brings  to  the  enforce- 
ment of  natural  obligations  the  vast  power  of  organization 
and  the  subtle  influences  of  intimate  association.  The 
trustful  reliance  of  brother  upon  brother  unites  men's 
hearts,  strengthens  their  resolves,  soothes  them  in  times  of 
trouble,  and  adds  joy  to  happiness  itself.  Moreover,  the 
unsectarian  catholicity  of  Masonry  must  tend  to  enlarge 
men's  sympathies  and  broaden  their  charities.  It  knows 
no  distinctions  of  politics  or  of  religion.  Men  who  meet 
elsewhere  as  strangers  or  antagonists,  in  the  lodge  meet  only 
as  friends  and  brothers;  and  into  whatsoever  region  any 
Mason  goes,  whatever  be  the  dominant  religion  or  the 
constituted  form  of  government,  he  may  hope  to  find  men 
who  will  know  him  as  a  brother,  and  as  a  brother  only. 
In  short,  however  devout  he  may  be,  or  rather,  the  more 
devout  he  is,  the  more  deeply  must  a  true  Mason  be  con- 
vinced that  his  first  duty  as  a  man  and  as  a  Mason  is  to  be 
humane ! 

That  the  Masonic  Order  has  not  failed  in  the  attainment 
of  its  objects  Professor  Barnard  held  to  be  proved  by  the 
character  of  the  men  whom  it  has  honored  with  the  chief 
control  of  its  affairs,  and  whose  lives  are  the  best  vindica- 
tion of  its  principles.  Its  loyalty  to  constituted  govern- 
ment has  been  proved  in  its  English  branch  by  the  fact 
that  eleven  kings  of  England,  one  Prince  of  Wales,  two 
royal  dukes,  and  many  noblemen  have  held  the  exalted  sta- 
tion of  Grand  Master.  That  it  has  had  the  confidence  of 
the  Church  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the  greatest  of  English 
cardinals,  the  sagacious  Wolsey,  two  archbishops  of  Can- 
terbury, one  archbishop  of  York,  seven  bishops,  and  three 
mitred  abbots  have  held  the  same  dignity.  Its  respect  for 
learning  has  been  shown  by  electing  to  the  same  office  the 
celebrated  architects  Inigo  Jones  and  Christopher  Wren 
and  the  equally  celebrated  philosopher  Desaguliers.  In 


100  MEMOIRS  OF 

this  country  the  names  of  such  Masons  as  Washington, 
Warren,  Hamilton,  Clinton,  Lafayette,  Jackson,  and  many 
others  are  sufficient  to  justify  the  assertion  that  an  order 
to  which  they  allied  themselves  could  not  have  been 
unworthy  of  them. 

Replying  to  the  popular  objection  to  the  secrecy  of 
Masonry,  he  ironically  suggested  that  it  should  be 
abolished. 

Eschew  [he  said]  this  formidable  secrecy.  Unveil  the  mys- 
teries of  your  craft.  Like  the  peripatetic  philosophers,  pursue 
your  studies  and  pronounce  your  lectures  in  the  public  groves. 
In  your  charities,  reverse  the  precept  of  the  Saviour.  When 
thou  doest  thine  alms,  do  as  the  hypocrites  do !  Sound  a  trum- 
pet before  you  in  the  streets  and  synagogues,  that  you  may  be 
seen  of  men ;  and  then,  like  the  Pharisee,  thank  God  with  a 
loud  voice  that  you  are  not  as  other  men  are.  Emulate  the 
moralist,  who  desired  to  live  in  a  house  of  glass  that  all  the 
world  might  see  the  most  secret  acts  of  his  life.  Peradventure 
you  may  thus  succeed  in  winning  over  the  good  will  of  those 
whose  delicate  scruples  and  tender  consciences  force  them  to 
withhold  from  you  the  light  of  their  countenances. 

Continuing  in  a  graver  mood,  he  showed  that  such  objects 
as  those  of  Masonry  ought  not,  in  modesty  or  decency,  to 
be  pursued  with  ostentation,  and  that  to  make  the  order 
effective  for  those  purposes  the  confidence  of  private  fra- 
ternal association  is  indispensable.  He  reminded  his  hear- 
ers that  the  Christian  Church,  at  certain  critical  periods 
of  its  history,  had  assumed  the  character  of  a  secret  asso- 
ciation. He  instanced  the  fact  that  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States,  and  the  Senates  of  the  several  States,  in 
their  capacity  as  executive  advisers,  are  secret  associations, 
created  and  established  as  such  by  the  written  constitutions 
of  the  land,  sitting  with  closed  doors,  their  transactions 
veiled  in  secrecy,  and  their  members  bound  by  solemn 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  101 

oaths  not  to  lift  the  veil  from  their  proceedings.  From 
these  instances  he  concluded  that  the  secret  transaction  of 
business  cannot  be  necessarily  or  universally  wrong.  That 
secret  associations  may  be  formed  for  evil  purposes  is  true; 
but  so  may  open  associations.  That  secrecy  makes  bad 
societies  more  dangerous  is  admitted;  but  then  either  the 
evil  purpose  precedes  the  organization,  or  else  an  original 
good  purpose  is  radically  changed,  and  in  either  case  its 
members  do  not  only  cast  a  veil  of  secrecy  around  their 
proceedings;  they  hide,  if  possible,  the  very  fact  of  their 
association.  They  hate  the  light  because  their  deeds  are 
evil.  In  no  such  sense  is  Masonry  a  secret  institution. 
Its  existence  is  avowed.  Its  purposes  are  openly  pro- 
claimed. The  times  of  its  assembly  are  published.  Many 
of  its  ceremonies  are  performed  before  the  world.  It 
keeps  nothing  secret  but  its  own  peculiar  business,  which 
there  are  sufficient  reasons  for  keeping  to  itself. 

Referring  to  the  political  persecution  of  the  Masonic 
Order,  which  had  then  happily  passed  away,  Professor 
Barnard  closed  his  address  with  warm  congratulations  to 
his  brethren  on  the  favorable  auspices  under  which  their 
communications  were  now  held.  He  encouraged  them  to 
expect  a  future  of  great  prosperity  for  their  order.  He 
urged  them  to  justify  their  privileges  by  obedience  to  its 
principles,  and  to  remember  that  "the  Great  Light  of 
Masonry  is  the  Word  of  God." 

It  is  not  only  as  his  first  public  discourse  in  Alabama 
that  this  address  is  remarkable  ;  from  the  day  of  its  pub- 
lication it  had  the  effect  of  making  him  a  marked  man 
in  that  State.  In  their  love  and  admiration  of  eloquence 
the  people  of  the  South  are  thorough  Greeks,  and  this 
address  represented  an  order  of  eloquence  which  is  rarely 
heard  in  the  pulpit,  in  the  forum,  or  at  the  hustings.  The 
cogency  of  its  reasoning,  the  lightness  of  its  humor,  its 


102  MEMOIRS   OF 

earnestness  of  moral  purpose,  its  broad  catholicity  of  sen- 
timent, and  the  chaste  felicity  of  its  diction  commended 
the  advocate  of  Masonry  to  the  respect  of  thousands  who 
were  not  interested  in  his  cause.  The  Masonic  fraternity 
was  proud  of  its  champion;  the  University  was  proud  of 
its  representative;  men  of  all  conditions  in  the  State  were 
proud  of  their  fellow-citizen.  The  attention  thus  attracted 
to  him  led,  of  course,  to  a  recognition  of  his  more  peculiar 
merits  as  a  man  of  science.  Nothing  but  time  was  needed 
to  afford  some  opportunity  of  public  distinction;  and  the 
time  required  was  not  long.  In  1846  he  was  called  to 
serve  the  State  on  an  occasion  of  high  importance. 

In  that  year  the  States  of  Alabama  and  Florida  ap- 
pointed a  joint  commission  to  ascertain  and  permanently 
settle  the  boundary  between  them.  While  Florida  was 
still  a  Spanish  possession,  the  boundary  line  between  it 
and  the  territory  of  the  United  States  was  established  by 
treaty  at  the  31st  parallel  of  north  latitude,  and  when 
Florida  and  Alabama  had  both  become  States  of  the  Union, 
the  same  parallel  remained  the  boundary  between  them. 
Unfortunately,  however,  it  then  appeared  that  in  1796 
two  boundary  lines  had  been  surveyed  and  distinctively 
marked  in  accordance  with  the  Spanish  treaty,  and  that 
these  two  did  not  coincide.  At  the  Chattahoochee  River 
they  were  distant  from  each  other  by  more  than  a  mile; 
towards  the  west  the  distance  diminished  until,  at  the 
Perdido,  the  western  boundary  of  Florida,  it  was  only  a 
few  hundred  feet.  The  strip  of  land  between  the  two 
lines  was  virtually  a  no-man's-land,  and  became  the  natu- 
ral resort  of  criminals  and  desperadoes  from  both  States, 
since,  within  that  strip,  they  could  defy  the  officers  of 
the  law.  Alabama  claimed  the  more  southern  line  as  the 
boundary;  Florida  claimed  the  more  northern,  and  while 
the  question  of  jurisdiction  remained  unsettled,  neither 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  103 

State  could  exercise  effectual  jurisdiction  in  the  disputed 
territory.  The  joint  commission  appointed  by  the  two 
States  to  put  an  end  to  this  anomaly  included  commis- 
sioners and  an  astronomer  on  the  part  of  each  State.  Pro- 
fessor Barnard  was  appointed  astronomer  for  Alabama, 
and  an  officer  of  the  United  States  Engineer  Corps  was 
appointed  astronomer  on  the  part  of  Florida.  The  com- 
mission was  instructed  to  begin  its  work  at  the  intersec- 
tion of  the  disputed  lines  with  the  Chattahoochee  River. 
On  arriving  at  the  place  of  meeting,  Professor  Barnard 
found  the  commissioners  for  Alabama  already  in  camp; 
the  commissioners  for  Florida  reported  themselves  soon 
afterwards;  but  the  astronomer  for  Florida  did  not  make 
his  appearance,  and  by  joint  consent  Barnard  was  requested 
to  act  in  behalf  of  that  State  also. 

On  investigation,  it  appeared  that  the  more  south- 
ern of  the  two  boundary  lines  was  marked  by  circular 
mounds  of  earth,  about  a  mile  apart,  each  surrounded  by 
a  ditch  from  which  the  earth  had  been  thrown  up  to  form 
the  mound.  The  other  line  was  marked  by  "blazes"  of 
the  trees,  every  tree  on  the  line  being  blazed  both  on  the 
north  and  on  the  south  side  ;  and  all  other  trees  within 
about  one  hundred  feet  north  and  south  of  the  line  were 
blazed  on  the  side  nearest  the  line.  Thus  the  blazed  line 
was  easily  followed,  as  the  whole  country  was  covered 
with  a  dense  forest  of  pines.  Barnard's  first  proceeding 
was  to  make  observations  to  determine  the  latitude  ;  and, 
as  it  was  impossible  to  use  fixed  instruments,  he  was 
obliged  to  depend  upon  a  reflecting  circle  with  an  artifi- 
cial horizon.  He  presently  satisfied  himself  that  the 
southern  line,  marked  by  mounds,  was  the  true  line,  and 
his  conviction  was  speedily  verified.  In  running  due  west, 
they  invariably  went  directly  from  mound  to  mound, 
while  the  blazed  line  was  found  to  be  crooked.  The 


104  MEMOIRS  OF 

conclusion  was  that  the  blazed  line  was  what  surveyors 
call  a  "random  line."  At  the  time  of  the  treaty  with 
Spain,  the  whole  Gulf  Coast  belonged  to  that  power  ; 
and  the  government  surveyors  in  1796  began  to  run  the 
treaty  line  due  east  from  the  Mississippi.  It  seemed  that 
they  must  have  run  their  first  line  by  compass,  blazing 
their  way  as  they  went ;  and  that,  after  reaching  the 
Chattahoochee,  they  had  made  observations  to  correct  their 
errors,  and  so  had  established  the  mound  line  by  offsets. 
Having  come  to  this  conclusion  and  laid  it  before  the  com- 
missioners, Barnard  was  requested  to  continue  the  further 
investigation  of  the  line  westward  by  himself  alone.  This 
he  accordingly  did,  not,  however,  by  following  the  lines 
continuously,  but  by  examining  them  at  different  points. 
At  no  point  did  he  fail  to  find  both  lines,  though  the 
distance  between  them  varied  greatly,  and  at  the  Tensaw 
(the  western  branch  of  the  Alabama)  they  were  so  near 
together  that  an  arrow  might  have  been  shot  from 
the  one  to  the  other.  Between  the  two  branches  of  the 
Perdido  River  he  came  upon  traces  of  the  camp  of  the 
original  surveyors  of  1796  in  a  beautiful  grove  of  beech 
trees,  on  the  bark  of  which  were  inscriptions  of  names, 
dates,  and  fanciful  figures.  A  countryman  whom  he  had 
employed  as  a  guide  had  served  in  his  boyhood  as  a  chain- 
carrier  in  the  original  survey,  and  recognized  the  names 
inscribed  on  the  beech  trees  as  the  names  of  men  who  had 
accompanied  that  expedition.  On  his  return  to  Alabama, 
Professor  Barnard  made  his  report  to  the  governors  of 
Alabama  and  Florida.  It  was  accepted  and  approved 
by  both  ;  and,  shortly  afterwards,  the  Legislatures  of  the 
two  States  concurred  in  establishing  the  mound  line  as 
the  boundary  between  them. 

Soon  after  his  return  from  the  Florida  boundary  Pro- 
fessor Barnard  married  Miss  Margaret  McMurray,  a  young 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  105 

lady  of  English  parentage  who  had  gone  from  her  home 
in  Ohio  to  pay  a  long  visit  to  relatives  in  Alabama.  This 
union  was  in  every  way  fortunate.  It  was  emphatically 
a  love  match  on  both  sides,  and  it  remained  a  marriage 
of  love  on  both  sides  for  more  than  forty  years.  It  was 
certainly  not  a  prudent  marriage,  as  the  world  counts 
prudence,  for  neither  Barnard  nor  his  bride  was  rich  ;  in 
fact,  they  were  both  poor,  and  what  was  worse,  Barnard 
was  in  debt.  His  income  had  never  been  large,  and  he 
was  no  economist.  While  he  had  money,  he  spent  it 
freely  on  his  scientific  experiments,  in  the  purchase  of 
books  and  instruments,  in  the  pleasures  of  the  day,  or  in 
the  service  of  his  friends  ;  when  his  purse  was  empty,  as 
it  generally  was,  he  had  unlimited  credit  which  he  was 
only  too  ready  to  use.  Mrs.  Barnard  soon  brought  order 
into  his  confused  affairs.  His  debts  must  be  paid,  of 
course,  and  to  pay  them  out  of  his  small  income  meant 
nothing  less  than  systematic  and  long-continued  self-denial 
in  the  homeliest  affairs  of  life.  For  years  she  kept  their 
expenditures  at  the  lowest  limit,  stinting  even  their  table 
in  the  use  of  meats  and  drinks  which  are  commonly  re- 
garded as  necessaries.  Yet  these  were  happy  years  to 
both  of  them.  Mrs.  Barnard's  only  pride  was  in  her 
husband,  and  Barnard  himself  was  one  of  those  strong 
men  whose  very  strength  is  strengthened  and  ennobled  by 
a  woman's  influence.  In  their  abundance  of  happiness 
they  did  not  feel  their  self-imposed  privations,  and  as 
their  burden  of  debt  grew  gradually  lighter,  they  were 
gladdened  by  the  prospect  of  release  and  ease. 

Shortly  after  their  marriage  he  began  again  to  entertain 
the  thought  of  renewing  his  candidature  for  holy  orders, 
and  entered  into  correspondence  on  that  subject  with  the 
saintly  Dr.  Cobbs,  Bishop  of  Alabama.  As  Mrs.  Barnard 
was  an  enthusiast  in  the  cause  of  temperance,  it  was 


106  MEMOIES   OF 

probably  under  her  influence  that  he  became,  about  the 
same  time,  a  devoted  advocate  of  temperance  reform  ;  and 
the  zeal  and  courage  with  which  he  threw  himself  into 
that  movement  in  a  community  in  which  the  daily  use  of 
alcoholic  liquors  was  almost  universal  attracted  to  him 
the  interested  attention  of  the  people  of  the  whole  State, 
made  him  the  recognized  leader  of  the  temperance  re- 
formers, and  commanded  the  respect  even  of  those  who 
were  most  opposed  to  his  views. 

His  first  appearance  in  1849  as  an  advocate  of  total 
abstinence  was  made  in  a  powerful  defence  of  the  new 
order  of  the  "  Sons  of  Temperance,"  in  which  he  main- 
tained that  "  civilization  discloses  a  remedy  for  the  evils 
it  engenders";  and  contended  that  the  remedy  for  the 
evil  of  intemperance  is  to  be  found  in  voluntary  associa- 
tions like  the  Sons  of  Temperance.  The  paper  barriers 
of  legislation,  he  said,  had  been  raised  in  vain  against  the 
progress  of  the  drink  habit. 

When  a  favorite  vice  has  fairly  made  its  citadel  within  the 
public  heart,  it  is  idle  to  bombard  it  with  legislative  ordnance, 
or  to  strive  by  mere  brute  force  to  expel  it  from  its  strong- 
hold. It  can  be  effectually  assailed  only  by  the  mighty  engine 
of  public  opinion ;  and  in  no  way  can  public  opinion  be  brought 
to  bear  so  energetically  as  through  its  visible  embodiment  in 
great  associations  of  individuals. 

He  repelled  the  objection  that  such  organizations  must 
be  content  to  appeal  to  the  moral  and  social  instincts,  and 
not  directly  to  the  sanctions  of  religion. 

If  we  may  not  without  sin  strive  to  suppress  a  ruinous  vice 
by  human  means,  neither  may  we  without  sin  presume  to 
punish  crime  by  laying  upon  the  criminal  the  heavy  hand  of 
the  law.  Governments  should  build  no  prisons,  erect  no 
scaffolds,  train  no  police.  If  it  be  said  that  God  has  com- 
manded us  to  respect  the  governments  under  which  we  live, 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  107 

that  is  simply  to  say  that  He  has  given  His  express  sanction 
to  the  principle  we  maintain;  that  is,  the  principle  of  the 
rightfulness  of  employing  human  means  to  put  down  human 
vice.  On  this  point  I  speak  boldly.  I  declare  my  deeply 
seated  and  unalterable  conviction  that  to  set  up  religion  in 
opposition  to  the  great  temperance  reform  is  to  do  evil  to  the 
cause  of  religion.  What  is  that  religion  which  will  not  allow 
men  to  be  made  better  than  they  are,  because  they  are  not  in  a 
moment  transformed  into  saints  ?  What  is  that  religion  which 
will  not  permit  us  to  restore  the  half-crazed  inebriate  to  his 
senses,  that  we  may  bring  him  as  a  sane  man  into  the  sanctuary 
of  God  and  set  him  before  the  altar,  clothed  and  in  his  right 
mind? 

To  the  large  class  of  persons  who  approve  of  temperance 
reform,  but  who  decline  to  join  the  ranks  of  the  pledged 
reformers,  on  the  ground  that  they  have  no  need  of 
pledges  to  save  or  restrain  themselves,  he  made  an  elo- 
quent appeal. 

No !  You  have  no  need  of  us !  But  we  have  need  of  you ! 
Suffering  humanity  has  need  of  you.  The  weeping  wife  has 
need  of  you.  The  victim  of  starvation  has  need  of  you.  The 
shelterless  infant,  clinging  to  a  mother's  breast  that  is  even 
colder  than  itself,  has  need  of  you.  In  those  loathsome  hovels 
which  dot  the  face  of  our  beloved  country  like  so  many  plague- 
spots,  and  in  those  more  loathsome  dens  of  vice  and  crime, 
reeking  with  abomination  in  the  purlieus  of  our  great  cities, 
there  are  children  with  immortal  souls  fresh  from  the  hand 
of  God,  but  destined,  as  it  seems,  to  live  a  life  of  crime,  and 
to  die,  perhaps,  a  felon's  death.  Those  children  have  need 
of  you !  How  can  you  think  of  these  things  and  then  have 
hearts  to  bid  us  God  speed  in  a  work  in  which  you  will  not 
join  us  but  which  we  cannot  do  without  you  ?  Whatever  we 
may  accomplish,  we  never  can  exterminate  this  vice,  so  long 
as  there  shall  be  a  class  of  neutrals  in  the  land.  Neutrals  ! 
There  can  be  no  neutrals.  Intemperance  has  no  rampart  of 
defence  so  nearly  impregnable  as  that  which  is  thrown  up 
before  it  by  the  army  of  neutrals.  If  you  would  not  fight  for 


108  MEMOIRS   OF 

the  perpetuation  of  drunkenness,  you  must  fight  against  it! 
Think  of  this  alternative  from  which  there  is  no  escape,  and 
then  —  choose  ye  for  yourselves. 

During  the  political  excitements  which  followed  the 
Mexican  War,  a  deep-rooted  determination  to  destroy  the 
Federal  Union  of  the  States  was  openly  proclaimed  by  not 
a  few  politicians  in  the  South,  and  particularly  in  South 
Carolina.  Passionate  efforts  were  made  to  inflame  the 
minds  of  the  people  with  a  resentment  of  wrongs  which 
were  partly  imaginary  and  partly  due  to  other  than 
political  causes.  To  deny  the  existence  of  such  wrongs, 
or  to  attribute  them  to  any  fault  of  the  people  of  the 
South,  was  bitterly  denounced  as  evidence  of  disloyalty 
to  that  section.  The  friends  of  the  Union  were  dis- 
couraged. The  people  of  the  town  and  county  of  Tuska- 
loosa,  who  had  always  been  resolute  and  devoted  Unionists, 
lost  heart.  It  was  during  this  condition  of  public  senti- 
ment that  the  anniversary  of  American  independence 
was  celebrated  in  1851.  In  the  rejoicings  of  that  day 
all  parties  were  equally  enthusiastic  and  equally  sincere, 
and  Professor  Barnard,  whose  eloquence  was  universally 
admired,  was  invited  to  deliver  the  usual  oration.  He 
consented  to  perform  that  duty  only  on  condition  that 
he  should  be  at  liberty  to  speak  his  whole  mind  on  the 
alleged  grievances  of  the  South  and  their  supposed  cause 
in  the  Constitution  of  the  Federal  Union ;  and  that  con- 
dition having  been  frankly  accepted,  he  prepared  to  make 
the  Fourth  of  July,  1851,  the  occasion  of  an  enthusiastic 
demonstration  of  loyalty  to  the  Constitution  and  the 
Union.  That  nothing  might  be  lacking  to  rouse  and 
express  the  sentiment  of  the  day,  he  wrote  a  patriotic 
hymn  to  be  sung  at  the  close  of  his  oration,  to  the  tune  of 
"Bruce's  Address";  and  with  some  natural  nervousness, 
but  with  an  unfaltering  purpose  to  be  guided  by  his  sense 


FBEDEPwICK  A.   P.   BARNAED  109 

of  public  duty,  he  discussed  the  burning  questions  of  the 
time  with  a  tact  which  disarmed  antagonism,  a  candor 
which  conciliated  attention,  a  boldness  which  commanded 
respect,  and  a  sincerity  and  depth  of  feeling  which  com- 
pelled the  sympathy  of  his  auditors. 

After  rapidly  sketching  the  growth,  the  greatness  and  the 
marvellous  prospects  of  the  American  Republic,  he  dwelt 
upon  the  fact  that  its  institutions  were  the  hope  as  well 
as  the  model  of  all  men  everywhere  who  dreamed  of  uni- 
versal liberty  for  mankind,  and  intimated  that  to  destroy 
such  hopes  by  wilfully  wrecking  the  magnificent  experi- 
ment of  the  Union  would  be  a  crime  against  human 
freedom.  Proceeding  directly  to  the  main  point  of  his 
discourse,  he  showed  that  the  alleged  grievances  of  the 
South  were  partly  misconceptions  and  partly  fictions; 
and  that,  in  their  gravest  aspect,  they  were  the  results  of 
a  misdirection  of  industry  at  the  South,  not  of  Northern 
aggression  or  of  political  inequality  under  the  Constitu- 
tion of  the  Union.  He  showed  that  a  diversity  of  indus- 
tries is  the  indispensable  condition  of  national  wealth, 
which  the  people  of  the  South  had  utterly  neglected, 
while  the  people  of  the  North  had  fulfilled  it  to  the 
utmost.  By  presenting  the  elements  of  the  question  in 
the  form  of  an  ingenious  hypothetical  illustration,  he 
showed  that  under  any  form  of  government  this  single 
difference  between  the  industries  of  the  two  sections  must 
inevitably  have  caused  the  economic  inequalities  of  which 
the  South  most  bitterly  complained.  He  insisted  that 
the  remedy  would  be  found,  not  in  an  abrogation  of  the 
Constitution,  nor  in  a  disruption  of  the  Union,  but  in  an 
intelligent  and  systematic  effort  to  diversify  the  industries 
of  the  Southern  States  by  the  introduction  of  manufactures 
for  the  supply,  at  least,  of  their  own  wants.  He  proved 
beyond  dispute  the  vast  profits  which  might  be  made  by 


110  MEMOIRS   OF 

the  manufacture  of  cotton  goods  in  Alabama.  By  a 
simple  statement  of  figures,  he  showed  that  they  were 
paying  double  prices  for  innumerable  articles  which  they 
might  make  at  home.  He  described  the  New  South  which 
might  appear,  —  that  New  South  which  has  at  last  begun 
to  appear,  —  if  large-minded  intelligence  were  applied  to 
the  direction  of  Southern  labor.  He  warned  them  that 
the  single  industry  of  the  South  was  a  precarious  de- 
pendence, since  some  new  invention  might  at  any  time 
make  some  other  textile  fabric  available  for  manufactures, 
as  the  cotton-gin  had  first  made  cotton  itself  available. 
Addressing  himself  to  the  advocates  of  disunion,  he  urged 
that  until  the  South  should  have  within  itself  the  elements 
of  industrial  independence,  separation  from  the  Northern 
States  would  have  no  other  effect  than  to  make  them 
equally  dependent  on  some  other  power,  and  that  if 
separation  must  ever  come,  it  could  not  be  maintained 
unless  industrial  independence  had  been  first  secured.  He 
ridiculed  the  notion  that  the  South  would  be  sustained  by 
foreign  alliances,  and  particularly  by  that  of  England. 
Its  borders,  which  were  now  protected  by  the  laws  of  the 
Union,  would  be  everywhere  infested  by  the  enemies  of 
its  domestic  institution.  England,  since  she  must  have 
cotton,  would  get  it  most  easily  and  cheaply  by  an  alliance 
with  the  North,  and  while  she  grasped  their  cotton  with 
one  hand,  she  would  gladly  use  the  other  in  the  liberation 
of  their  slaves.  Such  would  be  the  consequences  of  a 
disruption  of  the  Union,  for  which  no  sufficient  cause  had 
yet  arisen  —  a  pandemonium  of  anarchy  as  the  result  of 
ruining  the  hopes  of  liberty  throughout  the  world  ! 

The  effect  of  this  address,  which  is  given  in  a  somewhat 
condensed  form  in  the  following  chapter,  was  magical. 
The  Union  hymn  which  Barnard  had  composed  was  sung 
with  fervor,  while  tears  and  smiles  testified  the  emotion 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  111 

of  the  whole  assembly.  The  friends  of  the  Union  were 
encouraged.  The  more  thoughtful  advocates  of  disunion 
sentiments  were  touched;  and  when  the  oration  had  been 
published  and  circulated,  its  influence  in  overcoming 
the  spirit  of  disaffection  was  confessed  on  all  hands  to 
be  both  extensive  and  profound. 


112  MEMOIKS  OF 


CHAPTER  VI 

Oration  delivered  before  the  citizens  of  Tuskaloosa,  Alabama,  July  4, 1851. 

FELLOW-CITIZENS  : 

We  are  assembled  to  celebrate  the  seventy-fifth  return 
of  the  birthday  of  American  liberty.  Three  quarters  of 
a  century  ago,  this  day,  the  thirteen  united  colonies  of 
Great  Britain  on  this  continent  declared  themselves  ab- 
solved from  all  further  allegiance  to  the  British  crown. 
Seven  years  later,  at  the  close  of  an  exhausting  war,  they 
found  themselves  reduced  to  the  lowest  extremity  of 
national  distress.  Private  enterprise  was  paralyzed,  and 
a  frightful  depreciation  had  fallen  upon  all  the  evidences 
of  the  public  debt.  The  new  States,  still  in  the  feebleness 
of  their  infancy  and  miserably  debilitated  by  years  of  wast- 
ing warfare,  lay  scattered  along  a  thousand  miles  of  coast 
and  half  enveloped  in  the  original  forest.  Intercommuni- 
cation was  slow  and  difficult.  There  is  not  one  of  them 
which  is  not  virtually  nearer  to  the  European  continent 
at  this  day  than  it  was  then  to  its  nearest  neighbors. 
Though  nominally  united  by  a  compact  for  the  common 
defence,  they  found  themselves  unable  to  arrange  any 
common  scheme  for  repairing  their  ruined  credit  or  for 
stimulating  into  new  life  their  prostrate  industries.  A 
few  years  of  disheartening  experience  produced  a  univer- 
sal conviction  that  something  must  be  done  to  harmonize 
their  distracted  counsels  and  give  unity  to  their  efforts 
for  the  common  weal.  Out  of  this  conviction  sprang  the 
measures  which  resulted  in  the  adoption  of  the  present 
Federal  Constitution. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  113 

It  is  no  part  of  my  purpose,  to-day,  to  indulge  in  eulogy 
of  that  noble  instrument.  We  see  what  it  has  done  for 
a  people  whom  it  found  at  the  lowest  ebb  of  national 
depression,  and  whom  it  has  raised  to  the  highest  pitch  of 
national  grandeur.  The  world  never  before  witnessed  a 
progress  so  stupendous.  Other  nations  have  risen  on  the 
ruins  of  their  rivals.  Their  wealth  has  been  steeped  in 
the  tears  of  the  plundered,  and  their  glories  have  been 
stained  by  the  blood  of  the  slain.  Far  different  has  been 
the  march  of  the  American  Republic.  She,  too,  has  made 
her  conquests,  but  it  has  been  forests  which  have  bowed, 
mountain  barriers  which  have  been  laid  low,  and  rocky 
fastnesses  which  have  surrendered  at  her  resistless  ap- 
proach. She  has  imposed  her  chains  upon  the  elements, 
and  constrained  the  powers  of  nature  to  pay  her  tribute. 
Her  eagle  sweeps  uninterrupted  from  ocean  to  ocean,  and 
dips  a  wing  in  either  wave.  Admitted  but  yesterday  into 
the  family  of  nations,  she  disputes  with  Britain  the  sover- 
eignty of  the  seas,  and  divides  with  empires  of  a  thousand 
years  the  dominion  of  the  land.  These  are  no  words  of 
idle  boasting.  I  quote  the  following  from  the  London 
Athenceum : 

The  American  census  is  not  yet  complete ;  but  the  returns 
already  received  point  to  conclusions  far  beyond  hope  or  ex- 
pectation. Look  at  New  York,  for  instance.  In  1820  it  had 
a  population  of  123,000;  in  1830,  203,000;  in  1840,  312,000. 
This  rate  of  increase  was  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  statis- 
tics. But  the  population  is  now  said  to  have  risen  to  the 
astonishing  number  of  750,000 !  This  includes  the  suburb  of 
Brooklyn,  etc.  There  are  but  two  larger  cities  in  Europe ;  in 
ten  years  more,  at  the  same  rate  of  progress,  it  will  be  larger 
than  Paris.  In  thirty  years  from  this  date  New  York  will,  on 
the  same  terms,  be  larger  than  London. 

And  it  must  be  considered  that  the  commercial  capital  of 
America  is  not  fed,  like  our  Manchester  and  Liverpool,  at  the 
i 


114  MEMOIRS   OF 

expense  of  the  country ;  its  advance  is  the  type  of  that  of  an 
entire  continent.  In  1810  the  population  of  St.  Louis  was 
1600;  in  1830,  6600;  in  1840,  16,400;  in  1850,  it  numbered 
90,000!  So  far  as  the  general  nature  of  the  returns  can  be 
inferred  from  the  data  at  hand,  the  population  of  the  Union 
will  be  about  25,000,000.  From  the  year  1800,  when  the  num- 
ber was  a  little  more  than  5,000,000,  to  1840,  when  it  had 
advanced  to  17,000,000,  the  decimal  rate  of  increase  was  about 
33  per  cent.  This  rate  would  have  given  for  1850  a  population 
of  22,000,000  only. 

Material  power  has  been  developed  equally  with  population. 
Great  Britain  alone  excepted,  no  state  in  Europe  could  now 
maintain  equal  armaments  in  the  field  for  any  length  of  time. 
This  marvellous  growth  is  deranging  all  the  old  tradition  of 
"  balances  of  power."  America  is  not  only  a  first-class  state  — 
in  a  few  years,  if  no  internal  disorder  shall  occur,  she  will  be 
the  greatest  of  all.  Should  the  1840-50  rate  of  increase  be 
maintained  for  fifty  years,  the  population  will  then  amount  to 
more  than  100,000,000  !  German  wars  and  French  revolutions 
sink  into  complete  insignificance  by  the  side  of  considerations  like 
these. 

With  such  a  comment,  how  well  we  may  understand  the 
"  roars  of  laughter  "  with  which  the  American  Senate  recently 
received  the  menaces  of  Austria!  When  the  United  States 
shook  off  the  yoke  of  England,  their  people  numbered  no  more 
than  3,000,000 ;  when  they  were  last  measured  against  a  Euro- 
pean power  they  were  not  more  than  8,000,000.  Ten  years 
hence  they  will  be  equal  to  France  or  Austria.  There  hardly 
seems  to  be  a  limit  to  their  growth.  The  valley  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi would  alone  support  the  whole  population  of  Europe. 
In  its  vast  basin,  nations  are  now  growing  up  as  if  at  the  bid- 
ding of  enchantment. 

These  are  the  words  of  an  intelligent  European.  One 
sentence  of  the  passage  deserves  to  be  deeply  pondered  by 
every  friend  of  civil  and  political  liberty.  "America," 
says  the  writer,  "  is  not  only  a  first-class  state  —  in  a  few 
years,  if  no  internal  disorder  occurs,  she  will  be  the 
greatest  of  all."  Is  not  this  a  thing  to  be  desired? 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  115 

America  stands  before  the  world  to-day,  the  sole  champion 
of  those  principles  of  popular  government  on  the  preva- 
lence of  which  depends  the  redemption  of  a  world  from 
political  bondage.  To  her  welcoming  arms  are  now  flee- 
ing, year  after  year,  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  the 
down-trodden  victims  of  European  tyranny.  The  bruised 
spirits  who  remain  yield  for  the  time  to  a  despotism  from 
which  there  is  no  immediate  deliverance;  and  when  they 
bend  the  knee  to  heaven,  their  prayers  ascend  to  God  for 
blessings  on  the  starry  banner  of  the  West,  at  the  rustling 
of  whose  folds  their  masters  tremble  in  their  palaces. 

The  smothered  fire  which  now  burns  beneath  the  sur- 
face of  society  in  Europe  has  been  kindled  at  the  torch  of 
American  liberty.  The  hopes  of  those  who  feed  it  are 
kept  alive  by  the  example  of  American  success.  Let  the 
hallowed  light  expire,  and  these  cherished  hopes  will  be 
swallowed  up  in  the  blackness  of  despair. 

But  this  is  not  all.  When  America  shall  have  become 
the  leading  power  of  the  earth,  when  her  sons  shall  num- 
ber one  hundred  millions  of  freemen  and  the  population  of 
her  Mississippi  valley  alone  shall  outnumber  half  a  dozen 
European  monarchies,  she  will  be  not  merely  the  example 
and  the  encouragement,  but  the  powerful  protector  of  the 
wretched  and  oppressed.  She  will  no  longer  permit  her- 
self to  be  a  passive  spectator  of  events  that  affect  the 
happiness  of  the  human  race.  She  will  not  patiently  see 
a  new-born  republic  stifled  in  its  infancy,  as  recently  in 
Rome,  because  it  is  an  eyesore  to  kings;  nor  a  gallant 
people  ground  into  the  dust,  as  recently  in  Hungary,  be- 
cause they  dare  to  vindicate  their  immemorial  rights.  She 
may  not  undertake  a  Quixotic  crusade  of  political  propa- 
gandism;  but  surely,  surely,  she  will  no  more  suffer  vener- 
able age  to  be  brutally  massacred,  nor  defenceless  beauty 
to  be  stripped  and  lashed  by  the  Haynaus  of  another  cen- 


116  MEMOIRS   OF 

tury.  She  will  permit  no  monarchical  reactions  to  be 
enforced  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet;  she  will  not  permit 
tyrants,  at  Warsaw,  or  at  Dresden,  or  at  Olnrntz,  to  com- 
bine to  hold  a  continent  in  chains.  Every  foot  of  terri- 
tory, fairly  redeemed  from  despotism  by  the  bravery  of 
its  inhabitants,  shall,  in  the  shadow  of  her  powerful 
protection,  be  sacred  to  liberty  forever. 

Yet  there  are  not  wanting  among  us  men  who  would 
arrest  this  majestic  Republic  in  the  fulfilment  of  its  sub- 
lime mission ;  who  would  shatter  it  into  fragments,  and 
give  it  over  to  anarchy,  confusion,  and  ruin.  There  are 
not  wanting  men  so  false  to  humanity  and  to  heaven  that 
they  would  draw  down  upon  this  smiling  land  the  hor- 
rors of  civil  war,  and  fight,  in  effect,  the  battles  of  tyranny 
upon  a  soil  consecrated  to  freedom.  At  both  extremities 
of  the  Union  we  hear  the  Constitution,  under  whose 
benignant  influences  a  nation  has  been  born  in  a  day, 
made  a  continual  subject  of  reviling.  On  the  one  hand 
it  is  denounced  as  a  compact  with  hell ;  on  the  other  it  is 
stigmatized  as  an  engine  of  tyranny,  unworthy  to  be  the 
charter  of  a  free  people.  So  accustomed  have  we  become 
to  language  like  this,  that  it  has  ceased  to  attract  our 
attention.  It  is  deliberately  proposed  that  we  should 
tear  down  the  temple  of  liberty  which  shelters  us  and 
bury  ourselves  beneath  its  ruins,  and  the  public  listens 
with  composure.  It  is  even  possible  for  an  American 
citizen  publicly  to  urge  a  desecration  of  this  very  Sab- 
bath of  liberty,  to  entrap  little  children  into  a  public  and 
solemn  league  of  sworn  traitors  to  the  Government  which 
protects  their  infancy.  From  the  Charleston  Mercury  of 
June  llth  I  quote  the  following  suggestion  of  a  corre- 
spondent :  "  That  the  coming  anniversary  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  should  be  made  use  of  by  our  young 
friends  (boys  from  the  age  of  nine  years  and  upwards) 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  117 

to  form  Southern  Rights  Associations;  and  to  swear  upon 
the  altar  of  their  country  (I  mean  the  South  only)  their 
devoted,  eternal,  and  never-dying  hatred  to  our  infa- 
mously aggressive,  oppressive,  and  fanatical  Government." 
A  more  fiendish  proposition  never  emanated  from  the 
bottomless  pit. 

And  now,  to  what  is  all  this  deep-seated  bitterness 
owing  ?  I  need  not  be  told  what  is  the  immediate  cause 
of  its  present  manifestations.  I  have  no  need  to  hear 
again  the  story  of  the  repeated  and  frequent  intermeddling 
with  affairs  of  strictly  domestic  interest,  in  which  the 
North  has  been  the  assailant  and  the  South  the  sufferer. 
That  hostility  and  even  rancor  should  have  sprung  up 
among  us  toward  the  people  of  the  North,  on  this  account, 
is  not  surprising.  But  these  aggressions  and  threats  of 
aggression  have  proceeded  mainly  from  private  individ- 
uals, or  voluntary  associations,  actuated  by  a  spirit  of 
fanaticism ;  they  are  clothed  with  no  political  character 
whatever.  The  efforts  made  to  introduce  this  species 
of  agitation  into  politics  have  been  rewarded  by  no  sub- 
stantial success.  On  the  other  hand,  in  a  fair  trial  of 
strength,  during  the  last  Congress,  political  abolitionism 
has  been  substantially  defeated,  and  State  after  State 
has  withdrawn  the  legislation  which  has  justly  given 
offence  to  the  South.  At  this  very  moment  the  entire 
energies  of  the  Federal  Government  are  put  in  action  to 
secure  the  faithful  execution  of  the  law  which  has  been 
regarded  as  a  test  of  its  sincerity  of  purpose,  and  the 
local  authorities,  wherever  called  upon,  as  recently  in 
Boston,  have  earnestly  cooperated  to  the  same  end. 
Whatever  bitterness  of  feeling  individual  or  associated 
agitation  or  resistance  at  the  North  may  have  been  cal- 
culated to  awaken  in  the  South,  there  is  nothing  to  justify 
denunciations  of  the  organic  law  of  the  land.  If  we  have 


118  MEMOIRS   OF 

been  injured,  it  has  not  been  the  Federal  Constitution 
which  has  injured  us ;  if  we  have  suffered  wrong,  the 
wrong  has  not  come  from  the  Federal  Government. 
There  are  causes  much  deeper  than  this  for  the  war 
which  has  been  waged  against  the  Union  —  causes  which 
are  so  misunderstood  in  their  origin,  that  the  remedy 
proposed  for  their  removal  would  only  perpetuate  their 
effects. 

The  soreness  of  feeling  produced  in  the  Southern  mind 
by  the  infringement  of  undeniable  rights  and  the  interfer- 
ence with  strictly  private  affairs  has  been  seized  upon  by 
agitators  as  the  most  available  means  of  accomplishing 
their  designs.  It  has  been  affirmed  and  reaffirmed  that 
organized  associations  for  preying  upon  Southern  prop- 
erty have  annually  stolen  thousands  of  your  most  efficient 
laborers.  The  enormous  sums  thus  yearly  subtracted 
from  Southern  wealth  have  been  paraded  in  staring  capi- 
tals. One  hundred  thousand  fugitives  in  the  free  States 
at  this  moment  is  the  smallest  estimate  of  the  experimen- 
ters on  your  credulity  —  and  these  have  been  assumed  to 
represent  a  total  of  $50,000,000.  Now  what  says  the 
census  of  1850?  There  are  not  two  hundred  thousand 
free  negroes  in  all  the  free  States  put  together,  and  for 
twenty  years  this  population  has  been  nearly  stationary. 
Since  1840  its  increase,  with  all  the  imaginary  fugitives 
added,  has  been  only  about  eight  per  cent,  while  the  natu- 
ral increase  of  the  colored  race  held  as  your  property  has 
been  more  than  twenty-two  per  cent.  These  simple 
statistics  show  how  absolute  a  piece  of  manufacture  the 
statements  of  agitators  have  been ;  and  to  all  efforts  to 
produce  alarm  in  the  South,  may  be  opposed  the  dispas- 
sionate judgment  of  the  sagacious  and  prudent  statesman 
who  has  represented  your  sovereignty  in  the  national 
councils  ever  since  Alabama  became  a  State,  that  "  there 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  119 

is  less  danger  of  encroachments  upon  Southern  rights 
(now)  than  at  any  time  for  the  last  twenty  years." 

What  then  is  the  true  secret  of  this  revolutionary  mad- 
ness ?  Public  men  in  a  not  very  distant  State  have  not 
scrupled  to  avow  that  they  have  been  laboring  for  twenty- 
five  years  past  for  the  dissolution  of  the  Union.  Yet, 
according  to  those  very  men,  the  encroachments  upon 
your  rights  which  they  indignantly  denounce  and  adjure 
you  to  resist  date  back  no  farther  than  the  year  1835. 
Twenty  years  ago,  then,  the  war  on  your  institutions  had 
not  yet  opened ;  but  something  had  happened  twenty 
years  ago  which  you  would  do  well  to  remember. 

The  tariff  act  of  1828  had  hardly  gone  into  operation 
before  an  agitation  on  the  subject  was  begun,  in  South 
Carolina  and  elsewhere,  and  was  carried  on  by  the  aid  of 
all  the  machinery  which  politicians  so  well  know  how  to 
employ.  In  September,  1830,  a  State  Rights  Convention 
was  assembled  in  Columbia,  and  ended,  as  usual,  with  an 
inflammatory  address  to  the  people.  These  local  evi- 
dences of  dissatisfaction  produced  but  slight  impression 
on  the  country,  and  none  whatever  upon  its  general  pol- 
icy ;  for,  on  the  14th  day  of  July,  1832,  President  Jack- 
son affixed  his  signature  to  a  new  tariff  act,  retaining 
every  stringent  and  offensive  feature  of  the  former, 
which  had  been  known,  in  the  vocabulary  of  nullification, 
as  the  bill  of  abominations. 

On  the  25th  of  October,  in  the  same  year,  the  Legisla- 
ture of  South  Carolina  called  a  convention  of  the  people, 
to  assemble  at  Columbia  in  the  following  month,  for  the 
purpose  of  taking  into  consideration  the  obnoxious  laws 
of  the  Federal  Government,  and  of  devising  means  of 
redress.  On  the  19th  of  November  this  convention  pro- 
ceeded to  pass  an  ordinance,  declaring  the  acts  of  1828 
and  1832  to  be  null  and  void  within  the  State  of  South 


120  MEMOIKS   OF 

Carolina  and  naming  the  first  of  February,  1833,  as  the 
day  on  which  the  ordinance  should  take  effect.  On  the 
10th  of  December  General  Jackson  issued  his  famous 
proclamation,  declaring  his  intention  to  execute  the  laws 
of  Congress  at  every  hazard,  and  solemnly  warning  the 
people  of  South  Carolina  of  the  inevitable  consequences 
of  resistance.  On  the  first  of  March  the  great  pacifica- 
tor, Henry  Clay,  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  his  tariff 
compromise  become  the  law  of  the  land ;  and  on  the 
same  day  the  bill  to  provide  for  the  more  effectual  execu- 
tion of  the  revenue  laws,  commonly  called  the  force-bill, 
passed  the  House  of  Representatives.  On  the  llth  of 
the  same  month  the  State  convention  of  South  Carolina 
reassembled.  Though  the  law  of  Mr.  Clay  provided  for 
a  very  slow  and  gradual  removal  of  the  burdens  com- 
plained of,  and  held  out  the  certain  prospect  of  nine 
years  more  of  endurance,  yet  this  body,  finding  itself 
uncheered  by  a  whisper  of  aid  or  comfort  from  without, 
was  constrained  to  repeal  the  ordinance  of  nullification. 
As  a  salvo  to  the  wounded  pride  of  the  State,  it,  at  the 
same  time,  solemnly  nullified  the  force-bill ;  a  proceeding 
which,  considering  that  obstruction  to  the  execution  of  the 
laws  was  no  longer  contemplated,  was  trivial  and  nugatory. 
In  this  unfortunate  and  fruitless  struggle  between  a 
self-willed  State  and  the  Government  of  the  Union  first 
originated  that  fixed  and  settled  purpose  to  overthrow 
the  Constitution,  which  has  been  so  long  secretly  cher- 
ished, and  is  now  openly  avowed.  The  original  cause  of 
disaffection  has  been  almost  forgotten  in  hatred  of  a  Gov- 
ernment whose  fundamental  principle  is  that  a  minority 
shall  not  rule.  And  now  what  was  this  cause  ?  It  is  to 
be  sought,  not  in  any  dissatisfaction  with  the  generally 
beneficial  results  which  the  Constitution  has  wrought  out 
for  the  Union  as  a  whole,  but  rather  in  a  conviction  that 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  121 

its  benefits  have  been  unequally  distributed.  Such  a 
conviction  is  at  this  moment  entertained  by  many  who  do 
not  regard  disunion  as  a  remedy.  Indeed,  the  impression 
seems  extensively  to  exist,  that,  by  the  operation  of  the 
Federal  Constitution,  and  through  Federal  legislation, 
the  South  has  been  made,  in  some  sort,  tributary  to  the 
North.  This  feeling  cannot  be  better  expressed  than  in 
the  following  extract  from  an  article  which  appeared  in 
an  Alabama  newspaper  about  two  years  ago: 

At  present,  the  North  fattens  and  grows  rich  upon  the  South. 
We  depend  upon  it  for  our  entire  supplies.  We  purchase  all 
our  luxuries  and  necessaries  from  the  North.  .  .  . 

With  us,  every  branch  and  pursuit  in  life,  every  trade, 
profession,  and  occupation,  is  dependent  upon  the  North;  for 
instance,  the  Northerners  abuse  and  denounce  slavery  and 
slaveholders,  yet  our  slaves  are  clothed  with  Northern  manu- 
factured goods,  have  Northern  hats  and  shoes,  work  with 
Northern  hoes,  ploughs,  and  other  implements,  are  chastised 
with  a  Northern-made  instrument,  are  working  for  Northern 
more  than  Southern  profit.  The  slaveholder  dresses  in  North- 
ern goods,  rides  a  Northern  saddle  with  all  the  other  accoutre- 
ments, sports  his  Northern  carriage,  patronizes  Northern 
newspapers,  drinks  Northern  liquors,  reads  Northern  books, 
spends  his  money  at  Northern  watering-places,  crowds  North- 
ern fashionable  resorts;  in  short,  his  person,  his  slaves,  his 
farm,  his  necessaries,  his  luxuries  —  as  he  walks,  rides,  sleeps, 
loafs,  lounges,  or  works  he  is  surrounded  with  articles  of 
Northern  origin.  The  aggressive  acts  upon  his  rights  and  his 
property  arouse  his  resentment  —  and  on  Northern-made  paper, 
with  a  Northern  pen,  with  Northern  ink,  he  resolves  and  re- 
resolves  in  regard  to  his  rights  !  In  Northern  vessels  his  prod- 
ucts are  carried  to  market,  his  cotton  is  ginned  with  Northern 
gins,  his  sugar  is  crushed  and  preserved  by  Northern  ma- 
chinery ;  his  rivers  are  navigated  by  Northern  steamboats,  his 
mails  are  carried  in  Northern  stages,  his  negroes  are  fed  with 
Northern  bacon,  beef,  flour,  and  corn ;  his  land  is  cleared  with 
a  Northern  axe,  and  a  Yankee  clock  sits  upon  his  mantel-piece  j 


122  MEMOIRS   OF 

his  floor  is  swept  by  a  Northern  broom  and  is  covered  with  a 
Northern  carpet,  and  his  wife  dresses  herself  before  a  North- 
ern looking-glass;  his  child  cries  for  a  Northern  toy,  crows 
over  a  Northern  shoe,  and  is  perfectly  happy  in  having  a 
Northern  knife ;  his  son  is  educated  at  a  Northern  college,  his 
daughter  receives  the  finishing  polish  at  a  Northern  seminary ; 
his  doctor  graduates  at  a  Northern  medical  college,  his  schools 
are  supplied  with  Northern  teachers,  and  he  is  furnished  with 
Northern  inventions  and  notions. 


Might  it  not  just  possibly  occur  to  thinking  minds  that 
all  these  complaints  may  be  well  founded,  and  yet  that 
their  causes  may  not  in  the  slightest  degree  be  attribut- 
able to  the  American  Constitution  ?  Might  it  not  also 
occur  to  them  that  if  the  evils  complained  of  have  not 
their  origin  in  the  Constitution,  a  disruption  of  the  Union 
would  bring  no  remedy  ?  Is  it  not  worth  while  to  con- 
sider whether  the  elements  of  human  happiness  are  not 
as  fully  within  our  own  reach  as  that  of  our  Northern 
brethren,  and  that,  if  we  do  not  use  them  within  the 
Union,  there  is  just  as  little  reason  for  believing  that  we 
should  do  so  out  of  it  ? 

Let  us  inquire  what  there  is  in  our  circumstances  to 
prevent  the  South  from  becoming  as  great,  as  good,  and 
in  all  respects  as  happy  a  people  as  the  world  ever  saw. 

Numerous  elements  contribute  to  the  sum  of  human 
happiness.  Highest  among  these  we  should  properly 
place  intelligence,  intellectual  cultivation,  virtuous  prin- 
ciple, practical  morality,  religious  freedom,  and  personal 
and  political  liberty.  No  one  will  complain  that  the 
Constitution  affects  us  unequally  in  regard  to  any  of 
these  things.  But  happiness  further  presumes  immunity 
from  want,  and  the  possession  of  such  comforts  and  luxu- 
ries of  life  as  secure  freedom  from  physical  suffering  and 
a  reasonable  amount  of  positive  physical  enjoyment ;  and 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  123 

the  aggregate  of  such  possessions  in  the  hands  of  the 
people  constitutes  national  wealth.  If,  then,  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  Union  affects  us  unfavorably  in  any 
point  essential  to  national  happiness,  it  must  be  in  our 
pecuniary  interests;  and  indeed  the  burden  of  all  com- 
plaints is  precisely  this  —  that  by  our  union  with  the 
North  we  are  impoverished  while  she  is  enriched.  That 
these  propositions  are  true  in  one  sense  is  undeniable. 
What  I  propose  to  prove  is,  that  the  connection  between 
the  North  and  the  South  which  has  brought  about  this 
result  is  not  the  political  union;  that  the  downfall  of 
the  Constitution  could  bring  no  remedy  for  the  evils 
of  which  we  complain ;  and  that  the  causes  of  our  com- 
paratively deficient  prosperity  are  wholly  unconnected 
with  legislation,  are  within  our  own  control,  and  are 
removable  at  our  own  pleasure. 

To  a  certain  extent,  the  possession  of  wealth  is  essential 
to  the  security  of  other  and  higher  elements  of  national 
happiness.  It  is  essential  to  progress  in  civilization,  in 
refinement,  in  knowledge,  in  scientific  discovery,  in  every 
useful  and  ornamental  art.  It  is  essential  to  the  exclu- 
sive devotion  of  the  labor  of  some  at  least  in  a  community 
to  other  pursuits  beyond  that  of  procuring  the  means 
of  sustaining  life.  And  in  proportion  as  the  labor  of 
a  larger  number  becomes  available  for  such  pursuits,  in 
the  same  proportion  will  the  arts  receive  their  develop- 
ment, and  the  comforts  and  elegances  of  social  life  be 
multiplied. 

It  is  not,  therefore,  without  reason  that  nations  strive 
for  the  increase  of  the  general  wealth.  That  which  in 
an  individual  would  be  covetousness  or  avarice,  in  com- 
munities is  a  laudable  ambition  to  secure  the  means  of 
promoting  the  highest  interests  of  man  as  a  rational  and 
a  moral  being. 


124  MEMOIRS   OF 

But  wealth  is  not  of  spontaneous  growth.  It  is  the 
offspring  of  never-ceasing  industry.  Wealth,  when  pro- 
duced, has  no  principle  of  permanence.  Our  possessions 
waste  before  our  eyes.  Ten  years  hence  we  may  be 
richer  than  to-day ;  but  our  wealth  of  to-day  will  in 
great  part  have  perished  to  give  place  to  other  posses- 
sions as  ephemeral  as  these.  The  permanence  or  fluctua- 
tion of  a  nation's  wealth  is,  therefore,  but  a  visible  index 
of  the  degree  of  steadiness  in  its  industry,  and  of  the 
skill  and  judgment  with  which  its  labor  is  applied. 

This  last  suggestion  brings  me  to  the  point  which  I 
have  been  preparing  to  approach.  In  order  to  be  wealthy, 
it  is  not  enough  that  a  people  should  be  industrious  — 
it  is  necessary  that  judgment  should  select  the  channels 
into  which  its  labor  is  turned,  and  that  skill  should  pre- 
side over  its  immediate  application. 

The  wants  of  civilized  man  are  spread  over  a  very  wide 
field.  The  channels  of  labor  have  been  multiplied  almost 
to  infinity.  Some  of  these  demand  chiefly  an  exercise 
of  strength ;  others  require  less  strength,  but  proportion- 
ately greater  skill ;  and  there  are  others  still,  in  which 
skill  alone  is  necessary,  but  skill  of  the  highest  order. 
Considered  as  means  of  producing  wealth,  these  vari- 
ous kinds  of  labor  are  very  unequally  valuable.  As  a 
general  rule,  those  which  require  the  greatest  exertion  of 
physical  strength  are  the  least  productive ;  and  those  in 
which  the  element  of  skill  predominates  are  the  most  so. 
The  visible  wealth  of  a  people  will,  therefore,  depend 
as  much  on  the  direction  given  to  its  industry,  as  on  the 
amount  of  labor  employed ;  and  in  every  community  an 
enlightened  economy  will  seek  to  introduce  and  encour- 
age those  branches  of  industry  which  secure  the  highest 
rewards. 

For  the  lowest  and  the  least  productive  sorts  of  labor 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  125 

there  will  always  be  a  demand,  and  usually  an  abundant 
supply ;  but  the  capacities  of  individuals  are  various,  and 
it  is  a  perversion  of  the  gifts  of  nature  to  waste  capacities 
of  a  superior  order  on  tasks  to  which  all  are  alike  equal. 
The  mere  drudgery  which  society  requires  may  be  sup- 
plied by  a  moderate  proportion  of  its  members.  Beyond 
this,  there  is  room  for  immense  improvement  in  wealth 
by  the  judicious  direction  of  the  disposable  labor  which 
remains.  To  misdirect  it  is  to  waste  a  valuable  means  of 
wealth ;  to  leave  it  wholly  unemployed,  as  is,  to  a  lament- 
able extent,  the  case  with  us,  is  to  convert  producers  into 
mere  consumers  of  wealth. 

Imagine  two  nations,  equally  favored  by  nature,  equal 
in  numbers,  and  equal  in  extent  of  territory.  Suppose 
free  communication  to  exist  between  them ;  but  let  both 
be  cut  off  from  commerce  with  other  peoples.  Suppose 
the  arts  in  both  to  be  in  their  infancy ;  and  both  to  be 
occupied  at  first  mainly  with  the  pursuits  necessary  to 
supply  the  physical  wants  of  their  people.  The  industry 
of  both  will,  for  the  most  part,  be  expended  upon  the 
cultivation  of  the  earth.  Their  earliest  garments,  dwell- 
ings, and  implements  of  husbandry  will  be  rude.  Now  in 
one  of  these  communities  let  the  spirit  of  invention  be 
awakened.  Let  superior  tools  and  new  devices  be  con- 
trived for  the  promotion  of  human  comfort  —  in  short, 
let  the  arts  spring  into  birth.  Their  neighbors,  still 
slumbering  in  intellectual  torpor,  will  soon  be  roused 
by  observing  their  improved  condition.  They  will  desire 
the  same  advantages,  and  two  methods  for  the  attain- 
ment of  that  end  will  suggest  themselves.  The  first 
and  simplest  is  to  purchase  the  products  of  the  newly 
developed  industry;  the  second,  to  transplant  to  their 
own  soil  the  arts  by  which  they  were  produced.  Suppose 
them,  from  indolence  or  any  other  cause,  to  prefer  the 


126  MEMOIRS   OF 

former ;  then,  in  order  to  purchase,  they  must  offer  an 
equivalent;  and  their  own  products  being  wholly  agri- 
cultural, they  have  nothing  else  to  offer  in  exchange. 
These  they  may  raise  in  greater  quantity  than  their 
own  necessities  require ;  and  they  may  exchange  their 
surplus  for  the  better  tools,  fabrics,  and  articles  of  com- 
fort or  luxury  manufactured  by  their  more  progressive 
neighbors. 

What  will  be  the  effect  upon  these  last?  The  opening 
of  a  market  for  their  productions  will  call  into  activity  a 
larger  amount  of  labor  of  the  higher  order,  and  will  stim- 
ulate them  to  advance  to  higher  degrees  of  skill.  With 
every  step  of  progress  new  additions  will  be  made  to  the 
means  of  human  happiness.  It  will  presently  appear  that 
the  labor  of  one  artisan  is  twice  or  thrice  as  valuable 
as  that  of  an  agriculturist ;  and,  consequently,  that  the 
wealth  of  the  progressive  people  has  become  double  or 
triple  of  what  it  was  at  first.  On  the  other  hand,  with 
the  multiplication  of  objects  of  use  and  ornament,  the 
people  who  have  hitherto  remained  exclusively  agricult- 
ural will  find  their  wants  increasing,  while  their  means 
remain  stationary.  Nor  will  they  even  enjoy  a  monopoly 
in  producing  the  only  articles  which  they  can  employ  in 
their  exchanges.  For  the  manufacturing  nation  has  still 
its  soil,  and  still  an  adequate  supply  of  that  humbler  kind 
of  labor  which,  under  intelligent  direction,  suffices  to  cause 
the  earth  to  yield  her  increase.  Indeed,  the  existence  of 
any  demand  for  agricultural  products  from  abroad,  which 
the  native  soil  is  capable  of  yielding,  will  arise  in  great 
measure  from  the  fact  that,  with  increasing  prosperity, 
a  community  becomes  proportionally  lavish  in  the  con- 
sumption of  the  good  things  of  this  life. 

For  the  non-manufacturing  people  to  attempt  to  rival 
the  prosperity  of  its  manufacturing  neighbor  by  increas- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  127 

ing  its  agricultural  production,  would  evidently  be  useless; 
for  increased  production  would  depress  prices  without 
removing  the  cause  of  inequality.  Here,  then,  we  should 
see,  between  two  nations  commencing  under  circumstances 
equally  favorable,  and  unaffected  by  legislation  of  any 
kind  whatever,  the  widest  contrast  in  point  of  prosperity. 
One  of  them  would  be  in  the  easy  enjoyment  of  every 
thing  which  art  has  invented  for  the  promotion  of  human 
happiness,  and  rapidly  multiplying  new  comforts  and  new 
luxuries.  Intellectual  development  would  be  advancing 
hand  in  hand  with  physical  improvement,  and  the  measure 
of  the  progress  of  both  would  be  seen  in  the  rapid  increase 
of  national  wealth.  The  other  community  would  have 
remained  stationary;  or  rather,  its  wants  having  outgrown 
its  means,  it  would  have  become  virtually  poorer  by  merely 
standing  still. 

These  consequences,  I  cannot  too  often  repeat,  are  so 
wholly  independent  of  constitutions  and  laws,  of  forms 
of  government  and  their  administration,  that  they  would 
occur  if  we  were  to  suppose  our  two  communities,  instead 
of  being  nations  distinctly  separated,  to  be  two  villages 
side  by  side.  I  am  far  from  denying  that  legislation  may 
interfere  with  the  natural  and  free  course  of  trade  —  I 
am  simply  asserting  that,  in  the  absence  of  legislation, 
or  under  legislation  precisely  similar,  the  chief  element 
of  prosperity  in  all  communities  is  the  intelligent  direc- 
tion of  labor ;  and  that  element  the  people  of  every  com- 
munity have  mainly  in  their  own  hands. 

There  is  one  condition  which  may  exempt  an  exclu- 
sively agricultural  community  from  the  ruinous  opera- 
tion of  this  general  law.  It  is,  that  it  possess  a  climate 
and  soil  capable  of  yielding,  on  a  large  scale,  some  prod- 
uct which  is  indispensable  to  its  manufacturing  neighbors, 
but  which  they  can  neither  produce  themselves  nor  obtain 


128  MEMOIRS   OF 

in  sufficient  abundance  elsewhere.  With  such  a  climate 
and  such  a  soil,  a  strictly  agricultural  people  may  be 
rich,  though  they  should  so  heedlessly  disregard  the  econ- 
omy of  labor  as  to  purchase  a  thousand  miles  from  home 
the  simplest  instruments  with  which  they  stir  the  ground, 
and  in  spite  of  their  careless  neglect  of  the  more  exhaust- 
less  resources  which  God  has  given  them  in  their  own 
strong  but  idle  right  arms,  and  their  naturally  acute  but 
slumbering  ingenuity. 

But  the  peculiar  product  of  the  soil,  in  the  case  sup- 
posed, would  have  no  value  were  it  not  capable  in  the 
hands  of  labor  of  assuming  a  higher  value  still.  This 
value  the  producer  sees  imparted  to  it  by  men  in  a  dis- 
tant land,  who  have  no  other  occupation,  and  who,  there- 
fore, seem  to  him  to  be  living  in  dependence  on  him.  He 
compares  the  wealth  which  the  raw  material  has  left  in 
his  hands,  with  that  which  has  been  wrung  from  it  in  the 
process  of  manufacture,  and  he  almost  feels  as  if  he  had 
suffered  wrong.  But  that  is  not  all;  he  perceives  that  in 
the  processes  of  transportation  and  exchange,  the  merest 
contact  with  his  product  enriches,  and  that  no  small  por- 
tion of  wealth  clings  to  hands  that  simply  handle  it. 
In  view  of  all  this,  when  he  is  obliged  to  apply  to  the 
men  to  whose  prosperity  he  has  already  supplied  the  life's 
blood,  for  every  article  of  necessity  or  use  or  luxury 
which  he  might  have  provided  for  himself,  but  did  not, 
and  finds  the  accumulations  of  one  year  melting  away  in 
provision  for  another,  and  all  this  to  the  profit  of  those 
who  have  done  nothing  but  profit  by  him  from  beginning 
to  end  —  it  is  not  surprising  that  he  should  be  annoyed 
at  a  state  of  things  in  which  all  the  advantages  appear  to 
him  to  be  on  one  side,  and  that  side  not  his  own. 

In  the  imaginary  picture  which  I  have  thus  drawn,  it 
seems  to  me  that  I  have  truly  described  the  situation  of 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  129 

the  cotton-producing  States  of  the  Union  at  this  moment. 
But  if  the  principles  which  I  have  laid  down  be  correct, 
it  is  utterly  visionary  to  seek  a  remedy  for  the  evil  in 
an  interruption  of  the  relations  of  business  between  the 
North  and  the  South.  By  such  an  interruption  the 
North  might  be  seriously  injured,  but  the  South  would 
have  nothing  to  gain.  If  she  still  pursues  her  policy  of 
producing  cotton  only  and  of  leaving  others  to  manu- 
facture it,  of  indulging  freely  in  the  luxuries  of  life  and 
leaving  others  to  prepare  them  —  nay,  more,  of  holding 
out  only  discouragement  to  the  intelligent  labor  of  white 
men  upon  her  own  soil,  while  she  purchases  her  pins  and 
needles,  her  screws  and  gimlets,  her  knives  and  hammers, 
her  broomsticks  and  hoe-handles,  her  lucifer  matches  and 
her  baby-jumpers  from  abroad  —  I  see  not,  for  my  part, 
what  it  can  matter  to  her  whether  all  these  "notions," 
which  she  ought  to  be  ashamed  to  buy  at  all,  are  manu- 
factured for  her  use  in  the  land  of  the  Yankees  or  in  the 
workshops  of  John  Bull.  One  point  of  difference  only  is 
perceptible,  and  that  is  in  favor  of  the  existing  arrange- 
ment —  we  obtain  them  at  present  free  of  duty. 

This  habit,  in  which  the  South  has  so  long  lived,  of 
resorting  to  workshops  at  a  distance  for  almost  every 
conceivable  article  of  manufacture,  has  made  us,  with 
all  our  wealth,  a  dependent  people.  To  a  sensitive  mind 
nothing  is  more  annoying  than  a  feeling  of  dependence  ; 
and  to  this  fact  I  feel  that  I  am  justified  in  ascribing 
no  small  portion  of  the  dissatisfaction  which  has  grown 
out  of  the  state  of  our  relations  with  the  North.  The 
offensiveness  of  those  protective  enactments  of  which  I 
have  spoken  consisted  not  so  much  in  their  directly 
oppressive  effect  on  the  South,  as  in  the  stimulus  they 
were  calculated  to  give  to  Northern  prosperity.  It  was 
felt  or  feared  that  they  would  increase  a  dependence  on 


130  MEMOIRS   OF 

our  part  already  too  grievous  to  be  borne.  From  this 
condition  of  things  our  people  have  become  impatient  to 
be  free.  It  is  this,  more  than  any  other  existing  evil, 
which  has  caused  the  word  disunion  to  be  of  late  so  often 
and  so  lightly  spoken  among  us,  and  the  thought  of  what 
it  signifies  to  be  contemplated  with  so  little  horror. 

But  unless  I  am  entirely  wrong  in  all  my  premises, 
disunion  would  bring  with  it  but  a  transfer  of  our  de- 
pendence. The  wealth  with  which  we  now  enrich  our 
Northern  brethren  would  be  poured  into  the  coffers  of 
a  foreign  people.  Other  ships  would  carry  our  cotton, 
other  brokers  would  speculate  upon  it,  other  merchants 
would  send  back  to  us  the  manufactured  fabric  for  our 
consumption.  Northern  hammers,  Northern  axes,  North- 
ern kettles,  and  Northern  broomsticks  would  only  give 
place  to  similar  articles  from  foreign  sources,  which 
would  be  liable  to  duty.  Disunion,  fellow-citizens,  may 
bring  with  it  many  advantages  which  I  am  unable  to 
discover ;  but  disunion,  believe  me,  is  not  the  road  to 
independence.  The  pictures  of  prosperity  and  greatness 
with  which  its  instigators  amuse  you  are  baseless  as 
the  wildest  visions  shaped  by  a  delirious  imagination  in  a 
fevered  brain. 

By  what  means,  then,  shall  we  be  independent  ?  By 
adopting  the  only  course  that  could  have  made  us  so — by 
ceasing  to  buy  of  others  every  article  essential  to  human 
comfort,  and  by  learning  at  last  to  make  something  for 
ourselves. 

I  am  aware  that  there  are  great  difficulties  in  the  way 
of  so  radical  a  change.  We  have  at  our  disposal  an  im- 
mense amount  of  involuntary  labor.  Could  that,  or  any 
considerable  part  of  it,  be  turned  with  facility  from  agri- 
culture to  manufactures,  the  problem  would  admit  of 
an  easy  solution.  We  have  also  a  considerable  amount 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  131 

of  white  labor,  engaged  also  in  the  cultivation  of  the 
ground ;  but  it  is  destitute  of  capital,  deficient  in  intelli- 
gence, bound  down  in  a  struggle  for  a  difficult  subsist- 
ence to  an  unvarying  routine,  entirely  undirected,  and 
incapable  of  self-direction. 

If  there  is  to  be  a  change  in  the  economical  distribution 
of  labor  among  us,  the  initiative  must  be  taken  by  citi- 
zens who  are  able  to  be  employers.  Such  citizens  have 
hitherto  held  themselves  personally  above  labor  —  at  least 
the  labor  of  the  hands.  Whether  this  feeling  has  not 
been  carried  too  far,  admits  of  more  than  a  question. 
Whether  the  true  dignity  of  labor  has  not  been  under- 
valued, is  worthy  of  our  serious  consideration.  Our 
domestic  institutions  have  powerfully  contributed  to  keep 
the  feeling  alive.  Wherever  involuntary  labor  exists  on 
a  large  scale,  idleness  is  too  apt  to  be  confounded  with 
respectability  ;  and  by  the  admission  and  recognition  of 
a  false  social  standard,  persons  who  engage  in  the  most 
productive  descriptions  of  industry  —  the  most  produc- 
tive because  demanding  the  highest  exercise  of  skill  — 
are  socially  ostracized  in  deference  to  a  class  of  men 
who,  while  idle  themselves,  complain  that  they  are  not 
prosperous. 

There  is  nothing  to  prevent  the  successful  introduction 
among  us  of  every  useful  art.  There  are  many  things 
in  our  situation  which  give  us  great  natural  advantages 
over  those  to  whom  we  are  now  accustomed  to  look  for 
our  supplies.  The  British  prints  and  muslins  in  the 
shops  of  Tuskaloosa  have,  in  one  form  or  another,  made 
a  journey  equal  to  a  third  part  of  the  circumference  of 
the  globe.  They  have  paid  the  expense  of  freights,  com- 
missions, insurances,  and  custom-house  duties,  and  have 
come  to  us  burdened  with  all  these  additions  to  their 
intrinsic  value.  Had  the  cotton  grown  in  England,  they 


132  MEMOIRS   OF 

would  have  been  taxed  in  but  one  direction.  Had  the 
British  cotton-mill  been  built  in  Alabama,  the  whole 
chain  of  impositions  would  have  no  existence. 

Now  I  do  not  wish  to  make  any  comment  upon  what 
any  cotton-mill  in  Alabama  has  yet  done  ;  but  I  do  wish 
to  call  your  attention  to  what  a  British  mill  transplanted 
here  would  be  capable  of  doing  ;  and  in  any  statements 
which  I  may  introduce,  I  wish  you  to  understand  that 
I  put  forth  no  vague  and  uncertain  conjectures  hazarded 
by  myself.  I  give  you  the  results  of  the  experience  of 
men  who  have  been  for  many  years  engaged  in  forward- 
ing your  cotton  to  market  and  in  bringing  to  your  doors 
the  products  of  Northern  and  foreign  industry.  Let, 
then,  such  a  mill,  constructed  on  the  bold  and  liberal 
scale  which  distinguishes  the  British  factories,  be  set 
down  on  the  banks  of  the  Warrior,  and  furnished  with 
the  raw  material  at  its  own  doors.  In  the  first  place, 
it  could  purchase  its  cotton  at  a  cost  permanently  four 
cents  per  pound  cheaper  than  at  present,  and  it  would 
be  able  to  turn  out  its  fabrics  at  a  corresponding  reduc- 
tion below  the  contemporaneous  prices  in  Manchester. 
Secondly,  these  fabrics  would  be  here,  instead  of  being 
four  thousand  miles  away,  and  we  should  receive  them 
free  of  any  charge  for  freights,  insurance,  custom-house 
duties,  or  importers'  profits.  All  these  things,  freight 
excepted,  impose  a  burden,  under  our  present  revenue 
tariff,  upon  imported  cottons  laid  down  in  the  city  of 
New  York,  of  no  less  than  45  per  cent  upon  the  prime 
cost.  Our  indirect  mode  of  trading  forces  us  to  add  to 
this  the  New  York  importer's  profit  of  121  per  cent,  and 
the  further  expense  of  sending  them  out  here,  10  per  cent 
more — amounting  in  all  to  hardly  less  than  80  per  cent 
upon  the  New  York  imported  cottons  now  on  the  shelves 
of  your  merchants  in  Tuskaloosa.  Supposing  the  direct 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  133 

trade  substituted,  however,  there  would  still  be  no  escape 
from  a  permanent  tax  of  nearly  50  per  cent  upon  all  your 
importations  of  manufactured  cottons  —  a  tax  to  be  super- 
added  to  that  which  arises  from  the  increased  expense  of 
the  raw  material.  If  the  cost  of  running  the  mill  would 
be  greater  here,  the  difference  would  not  be  sufficient 
materially  to  affect  the  general  result,  as  is  proved  by 
the  successful  competition  of  the  coarser  New  England 
muslins  with  those  of  Manchester  in  the  London  market, 
while  the  current  expenses  of  manufacturing  would  be  no 
greater  here  than  in  New  England. 

The  amount  of  British  cottons,  therefore,  which  our 
merchants  now  receive  for  every  hundred  dollars  ex- 
pended through  New  York,  could  be  furnished  by  a 
British  mill,  under  British  direction,  on  the  banks  of 
the  Warrior,  for  fifty-five  dollars ;  while  the  mill-owner 
would  pocket  a  handsome  profit  by  the  operation. 

Let  us  look  into  the  effect  of  our  policy  upon  some 
other  of  our  important  interests : 

Our  importations  of  woollens,  if  made  direct,  are  taxed 
to  the  extent  of  55  per  cent ;  if  introduced  through  the 
North,  to  no  less  than  92  per  cent.  Our  Sheffield  cutlery 
pays  55  per  cent,  as  directly  imported  ;  and  indirectly  — 
that  is,  as  usually  at  present  —  92.  Our  hardware  from 
Birmingham  pays  75  per  cent  up  to  New  York,  and  117 
here.  Our  crockery  hollow  ware  is  subject  to  the  enor- 
mous burden  of  130  per  cent  in  New  York,  and  200  to 
300  in  Tuskaloosa.  The  superior  article  called  granite 
is  taxed  100  per  cent  to  the  Northern  importer,  and  150 
or  upward  to  our  own  merchants.  Common  plates,  and 
common  cups  and  saucers,  pay  125  per  cent  in  New  York, 
and  more  than  200  here.  Such  are  a  few  of  the  burdens 
to  which  the  whole  South  placidly  and  contentedly  sub- 
mits, under  a  tariff  constructed  strictly  with  a  view  to 


134  MEMOIRS   OF 

revenue.  Who  would  believe  that  a  people  which  sits 
down  calm  as  a  summer's  morning  under  a  system  of 
taxation  so  utterly  ruinous  and  so  absolutely  self-im- 
posed, could  be  roused  to  fury  by  the  addition  of  10  or 
20  per  cent  duty  to  the  revenue  standard,  when  that 
very  addition  is  designed  to  break  up  this  most  per- 
nicious system  of  national  improvidence,  by  which  our 
wealth  is  swallowed  up  as  fast  as  it  is  made? 

But  to  return  to  our  hypothetical  cotton-mill.  If  Brit- 
ish enterprise  could  produce  the  results  which  I  have 
stated,  why  may  not  we  go  and  do  likewise  ?  I  antici- 
pate the  answer.  We  have  not  the  experience,  nor  the 
skill,  nor  the  tact  to  adapt  our  fabrics  to  the  condition  of 
the  market.  I  reply  that  the  answer  is  a  good  one  so 
far  as  it  goes,  and  would  be  decisive  but  for  a  single  over- 
sight. We  have  not  at  present  the  necessary  experience 
and  skill ;  that  is  admitted.  What  then  ?  We  must  not 
only  erect  the  mills  and  purchase  the  machinery,  but  we 
must  bring  the  men  who  are  to  manage  them.  This  is 
the  absolute  and  only  condition  of  success.  Our  splendid 
rivers  are  navigated  by  hundreds  of  steamers,  but  it  was 
not  always  so;  and  when  steam  navigation  was  introduced 
no  man  dreamed  of  putting  engines  of  such  enormous 
power  into  the  hands  of  men  who  were  unacquainted  with 
their  construction  and  unpractised  in  their  management. 
The  necessity  of  importing,  along  with  the  new  power, 
heads  and  hands  which  should  be  competent  to  govern  it, 
was  palpable  to  all.  The  application  is  obvious.  If  we 
would  build  up  any  art  among  us,  we  must  bring  here  not 
merely  the  necessary  machines,  but  also  the  practised  skill 
which  can  turn  them  to  account. 

I  do  not  mean  that  our  master  workmen  and  superin- 
tendents must  always  be  aliens  to  our  soil.  By  no  means. 
When  any  industry  shall  have  obtained  a  sure  footing 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  135 

among  us,  hundreds  of  native  artisans  will  spring  up 
to  carry  it  on.  Our  first  establishments  will  be  nor- 
mal schools  of  industry  ;  but  we  shall  need  no  foreign 
guidance  when  we  have  learned  to  go  alone.  It  is  no  dis- 
credit to  us  that  we  are  deficient  in  knowledge  ;  but  if 
we  refuse  to  learn,  we  shall  be  highly  censurable.  Let  us 
act  upon  this  principle, — let  us  endeavor  to  diversify  the 
applications  of  our  industry,  —  and  we  shall  soon  attain  a 
real  and  substantial  independence,  which  nothing  in  Fed- 
eral legislation  can  undermine. 

Other  incidental  but  important  advantages  would  flow 
from  the  adoption  of  this  policy.  Where  there  is  now 
a  sparsely  scattered  population,  we  should  presently  see 
thriving  towns  and  villages  multiplying  everywhere  the 
blessings  of  social  life.  Better  schools  and  more  of  them 
would  be  near  the  door  of  almost  every  family.  Feeble 
churches  would  grow  strong.  The  courtesies  of  life 
would  be  more  generally  regarded,  manners  would  be 
softened,  and  tastes  would  be  cultivated  to  a  higher  de- 
gree. Associations  for  intellectual  improvement  would 
become  possible.  Libraries,  reading-rooms,  forensic  clubs, 
lecture  halls,  arid  all  the  various  means  by  which  a  busy 
population  is  able  to  mingle  instruction  with  entertain- 
ment, would  come  into  existence  in  a  thousand  places. 
Our  people  would  thus  be  not  only  richer,  but  more  pol- 
ished, more  enlightened,  and  better,  at  the  same  time. 

Moreover,  our  population  would  go  on  increasing  in 
numbers  in  a  higher  ratio  than  heretofore.  The  tide  of 
immigration  from  abroad  has  hitherto  flowed  almost  ex- 
clusively over  the  States  of  the  North,  and  the  cotton- 
growing  States  have  had  no  inducements  to  attract  it. 
Southern  agriculture  is  ill  adapted  to  European  hands  — 
and  what  occupation  but  agriculture  has  the  South  had  to 
offer  ?  Let  the  arts  lift  up  their  heads  among  us,  and  all 


136  MEMOIRS   OF 

this  will  be  changed.  We  shall  attract  at  least  our  share 
of  that  great  influx  from  abroad  ;  and  we  shall  assimilate 
to  ourselves,  and  convert  into  defenders,  thousands  and 
tens  of  thousands  of  those  who  would  else  fall  naturally 
into  the  ranks  of  our  assailants. 

I  cannot  close  without  suggesting  one  additional  con- 
sideration. The  South  is  rich,  because  the  single  product 
of  her  industry  is  in  increasing  demand.  But  her  riches 
have  no  firmer  basis  than  the  permanence  of  the  demand 
which  creates  them.  Let  cotton  give  place,  even  par- 
tially, to  other  materials  of  textile  fabrics,  and  a  death- 
blow will  be  given  to  the  cotton-growing  industry  of 
America.  This  suggestion  is  neither  absurd  nor  impos- 
sible—  perhaps  not  even  improbable.  A  century  ago 
cotton  had  no  commercial  importance  in  the  markets  of 
the  world.  Why  may  not  something  else  supersede  cot- 
ton ?  Because  nothing  else  can  possibly  compete  with  it 
in  cheapness  ?  But  cotton  is  not  always  cheap.  It  was 
known  and  used  in  Europe  for  a  century  or  more  before 
it  could  compete  with  wool  or  flax.  How,  then,  did  it 
acquire  this  new  quality  of  cheapness  ?  Simply  by  the  ap- 
plication of  a  little  ingenuity  to  the  improvement  of  the 
methods  of  separating  it  from  the  seed.  Why  may  not 
similar  ingenuity  be  applied  to  other  materials,  with  simi- 
lar success  ?  I  do  not  undertake  to  say  that  this  danger 
is  immediately  upon  us.  But  the  fact  that  such  inven- 
tions are  possible,  warns  us  significantly  of  the  folly  of 
embarking  all  our  fortunes  in  a  single  bottom.  By  diver- 
sifying our  industries,  and  by  cultivating  all  those  useful 
arts  by  which  wealth  is  retained  at  home  and  accumulated 
where  it  is  retained,  we  can  attain  substantial  indepen- 
dence, and  we  shall  be  prepared  for  any  reverse  which  may 
affect  only  a  single  interest.  Poverty  or  riches,  want  or 
abundance,  will  no  longer  depend  upon  the  turning  of  a 


FREDERICK  A.  P.   BARNARD  137 

die.  Strong  in  the  multitude  of  our  resources,  we  shall 
always  be  prepared  for  what  the  morrow  may  bring  forth. 
We  shall  no  longer  seem  to  ourselves  to  be  accumulating 
food  for  cormorants,  or  lavishing  upon  others  the  aliment 
which  should  nourish  ourselves. 

Perhaps,  when  we  shall  have  familiarized  ourselves  with 
the  same  pursuits  which  have  made  our  Northern  brethren 
prosperous,  and  when  all  parts  of  our  common  country 
shall  be  more  nearly  assimilated,  we  shall  find  fewer  causes 
of  contention  in  the  national  legislature.  Perhaps  we 
shall  become  more  truly  what  our  fathers  were  before  us, 
and  what  we  too  still  are  in  name  —  a  united  people. 

But  if  this  may  not  be,  if  the  lamentable  schisms  which 
divide  us  are  fated  to  grow  wider  and  wider,  if  we  are 
doomed  to  see  the  glorious  flag  of  our  republic  rent  in 
twain,  and  the  fair  temple  of  liberty  in  which  we  have  so 
long  worshipped  crumble  into  ruin,  then  at  least  may  we 
of  the  South  feel,  in  that  day  of  darkness  when  we  decree 
our  separation  from  our  Northern  brethren,  that  we  have 
within  ourselves  every  element  of  an  empire,  and  are 
truly  independent  of  all  the  world. 

Decree  our  separation  !  On  this  unwelcome  theme 
permit  me  for  one  moment  to  dwell.  Permit  me  to  add 
one  word  of  warning,  one  word  of  entreaty,  one  word  of 
deep,  earnest,  and  most  certainly  patriotic,  conviction. 
For  what  should  we  decree  our  separation  ?  That  the 
broad  barrier  of  the  Constitution,  our  impregnable  rampart 
against  the  rabid  abolitionism  of  England,  may  be  broken 
down,  and  leave  us  exposed  to  formidable  assaults  and 
vexatious  annoyances  in  our  intercourse  with  the  world  ? 
That  the  combined  fanaticism  of  Christendom  may  plot 
without  restraint  against  our  peace,  may  harass  our  borders 
with  marauding  incursions,  and  instigate  servile  war  in 
the  very  heart  of  our  quiet  land  ?  That  the  obligation  to 


138  MEMOIRS   OF 

respect  and  restore  our  property,  which  now  shields  our 
widely  exposed  Northern  frontier  —  an  obligation  not 
cheerfully  fulfilled,  if  you  please,  but  still  an  obligation, 
and  — mark  that  —  still  fulfilled  nevertheless,  — may  give 
place  to  a  ceaseless  border  war  expanding  at  frequent  in- 
tervals into  general  hostilities  ?  Is  it  for  these  things  that 
we  are  to  decree  our  separation?  If  not,  then  for  what  ? 
What  did  I  hear  ?  A  foreign  alliance  ?  Did  some  one 
say  that  Britain,  in  terror  of  her  operatives  and  dependent 
on  the  cotton-growing  States  for  security  against  convul- 
sion, would  receive  us  under  the  shadow  of  her  wing  ? 
That  this  all-powerful  mistress  of  the  waves  would  fight 
our  battles  against  the  North,  and  that  a  British  line-of- 
battle  ship  would  blow  the  revenue-cutters  of  the  Union 

—  aye,  and  the  frigates  too  —  like  fishing  smacks,  out  of 
the  water  ?     If  I  did  not  hear  that  language  here,  I  have 
heard  it   elsewhere.     And  shall  we  yield   ourselves   up 
to  so  fatal  a  delusion  as  this  ?     Great  Britain  needs  your 
cotton,  you  say,  and  therefore  she  will  help  you.     Deceive 
not  yourselves,  fellow-citizens.     Great  Britain  never  gives 
where  she  has  the  power  to  take.     She  needs  your  cotton 

—  granted.     You  need  her  manufactures  —  she  knows  it. 
If  she  must  buy  or  perish,  you  must  sell  or  starve.     In  a 
contest  of  that  kind,  which  do  you  think  has  the  power  to 
hold  out  the  longest  ?     Certainly  not  you.     You  tell  us 
that  her  very  existence  is  at  stake  if  you  stop  her  mills. 
I  tell  you  that  you  cannot  stop  them.     You  say  she  fears 
the  rabble   of  her  unemployed  operatives.     What  is  to 
prevent  her  turning  that  rabble  loose  upon  you  ?     Do  you 
say  that  you  will  never  be  wanting  to  the  vindication  of 
your  independence  and  the  defence  of  your  fireside  ?     I 
hope  not ;  yet  my  heart  sickens  when  I  meet,  at  every 
turn,  still  the  same  trumpet-cry  of  conflict,  still  the  same 
menace  of  blood ! 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  139 

But  you  answer,  triumphantly,  England  will  sooner 
make  terms  than  fight.  England  cannot  come  to  terms 
with  you  without  fighting  an  enemy  more  formidable  than 
you  will  be  —  the  confederated  States  from  which  you 
will  have  torn  yourselves  away.  Unfortunately,  the  army, 
the  navy,  all  the  stores  and  munitions  of  war,  the  custom- 
houses of  the  great  seaports,  and,  more  than  all,  the 
immense  superiority  of  numbers,  will  remain  on  the  side 
of  that  confederacy.  You  propose  that  England  shall 
become  your  ally.  What  is  to  prevent  her  becoming  the 
ally  of  the  North  ?  Certainly  that  would  be  her  cheapest, 
her  surest,  her  most  direct  route  to  the  object  of  her 
wishes  ;  nor  will  it  be  any  objection  to  it  in  her  eyes  that, 
while  with  one  hand  she  grasps  your  cotton,  with  the 
other  she  might  liberate  your  slaves. 

These  remarks  may  not  be  acceptable,  but  are  they  not 
true  ?  And  if  they  are,  is  it  not  necessary  that  such 
truths  should  be  plainly  spoken  and  deeply  pondered? 
Decree  our  separation !  If  it  is  for  this,  or  anything  like 
this,  that  we  are  to  be  delivered  from  our  present  griev- 
ances, better,  far  better, 

Bear  those  ills  we  have, 
Than  fly  to  others  that  we  know  not  of. 

And  are  we  to  consider  ourselves  alone  ?  Is  nothing 
due  to  that  sublime  mission  which  has  been  confided  to  us, 
the  propagation  and  diffusion  of  free  principles  through- 
out the  world  ?  Shall  we  forget  the  prayers  of  fettered 
thousands  in  other  and  less  happy  lands  who,  with  out- 
stretched hands,  implore  us  not  to  quench  the  fires  upon 
the  only  altars  of  liberty  beneath  the  arch  of  heaven  ?  Is 
this  peaceful  asylum  of  the  oppressed  and  persecuted  of 
all  countries  to  become  a  pandemonium  of  anarchy  and 
carnage  ? 


140  MEMOIKS   OF 

Decree  our  separation  !  For  any  cause  that  has  vet 
arisen,  be  the  thought  cast  out  with  loathing  and  horror  ! 
Decree  our  separation  !  God  in  His  infinite  mercy  forbid  ! 

IEDEPEXDEXCE    ODE. 
Written  for  the  celebration  at  Tuskaloosa,  Alabama,  July  ±th,  1851. 

BY  PKOF.  P.    A.   P.    BJLRXJLRD. 

Tis  the  day  of  freedom's  birth ; 
Fling  her  starry  banner  forth  ; 
Let  it  wave,  from  South  to  North, 

In  her  own  blue  sky. 
Floating  wide,  from  sea  to  sea, 
On  the  breath  of  liberty, 
Let  that  glorious  standard  be 

Ever  borne  on  high. 

Who  its  onward  course  would  bar  ? 
Who  its  lustrous  folds  would  mar  ? 
Who  would  blot  away  a  star  f 

Let  him  come  not  near. 
Who  would  bear  it  proudly  on, 
Till  its  world-wide  course  is  run  ? 
Of  his  sire,  a  worthy  son, 

Let  him  join  us  here. 

By  that  sainted  hero,  sage, 

Whose  great  deeds  —  our  heritage  — 

Fill  with  brightness  hist'ry's  page, 

By  our  Washington, 
We  will  cling,  till  hope  expires, 
To  the  charter  of  our  sires, 
With  a  grasp  that  never  tires, 

Till  our  course  is  run. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  141 


CHAPTER  VII 

Barnard's  theological  studies  —  Disorders  in  the  University  of  Alabama  — 
A  senseless  attack  repelled  —  Letters  on  college  government  begun  — 
The  Yale  statute  and  the  South  Carolina  Exculpation  Law  —  Objec- 
tions to  both  —  Visitation  of  rooms  by  professors  —  Espionage  —  De- 
fence of  the  Faculty  —  Government  by  moral  influence — The  ideal 
college  officer  described  —  Origin  of  the  existing  college  system  —  Eng- 
lish colleges  of  the  olden  time  —  The  university  and  the  college  —  Unob- 
served changes  which  had  made  discipline  difficult  or  impossible  —  The 
college  community  —  The  old  system  of  government  impossible  —  The 
dormitory  system  condemned  —  Populous  towns  to  be  preferred  to 
country  places  for  college  establishments. 

THE  closing  years  of  Professor  Barnard's  service  to  the 
University  of  Alabama  were  years  of  much  peaceful  satis- 
faction. In  his  home  he  had  the  happiness  of  a  congenial 
marriage ;  in  his  profession  as  a  teacher  he  was  eminently 
successful ;  he  was  a  powerful  advocate  of  social  and  in- 
dustrial reforms;  he  was  honored  by  his  friends  and 
respected  by  his  opponents  in  the  arena  of  the  larger 
politics  of  the  time.  To  his  mathematical  and  scientific 
studies  he  had  added  some  considerable  researches  in 
philosophy,  and  having  again  become  a  candidate  for  holy 
orders,  he  entered  on  the  study  of  theology.  Barnard 
never  became  a  theologian.  He  had  sufficiently  con- 
vinced himself  of  the  substantial  truth  of  the  Christian 
religion.  The  historical  argument  had  satisfied  him  of 
the  justice  of  the  claims  of  the  Episcopal  Church  as  a 
validly  organized  and  doctrinally  trustworthy  Church  of 
Christ.  He  was  content  to  accept  its  teachings  in  their 
plainest  and  most  simple  sense,  and  while  he  took  pains 
to  inform  himself  of  the  chief  topics  of  controversy  con- 
cerning which  various  schools  and  parties  of  Churchmen 


142  MEMOIRS   OF 

have  held  different  and  contradictory  opinions,  he  was 
little  interested  in  such  subjects,  and  perhaps  regarded 
them  with  some  disdain.  He  seems  instinctively  to 
have  made  a  clear  distinction  between  the  Christian  faith 
and  the  endless  muddle  of  theological  opinions  by  which 
it  has  been  obscured.  A  brochure  from  his  pen  which  was 
published  about  this  time  shows  that,  as  a  churchman,  he 
believed  in  a  loyal  and  straightforward  obedience  to  the 
polity  of  the  Church  in  any  and  all  circumstances.  In 
short,  while  his  complete  reaction  from  puritanism  had 
made  it  impossible  for  him  to  be  an  "  evangelical, "  his 
constitutional  breadth  of  mind  made  it  equally  impossible 
for  him  to  become  a  partisan  "high  churchman."  With 
the  apparently  destructive  tendencies  of  one  section  of 
the  "broad  church"  school  of  a  later  time  he  had  no 
sympathy,  and  the  constructive  but  scholarlike  and  criti- 
cal school  which  is  represented  by  the  distinguished  head 
of  Keble  College,  Oxford,  had  not  then  been  thought  of. 
In  resolving  to  take  orders  Professor  Barnard  had  no  in- 
tention of  engaging  in  parochial  work.  He  had  finally 
and  completely  devoted  himself  to  the  work  of  teaching ; 
but  he  knew  that  in  every  age  of  the  Church's  history 
teaching  had  been  held  to  be  a  proper  function  of  the 
Christian  ministry,  and  he  desired  that  his  life  as  a 
teacher  should  be  sanctioned  and  consecrated  by  the 
ministerial  character.  In  the  studies  which  were  nec- 
essary to  prepare  him  for  his  ordination  he  spent  some 
considerable  part  of  his  leisure  during  the  closing  years 
of  his  residence  in  Tuskaloosa.  His  last  year  there  was 
occupied  with  educational  controversies  which  would 
have  been  regrettable  if  they  had  not  caused  him  to 
formulate  and  publish  the  views  of  college  discipline 
and  organization  which  he  continued  to  maintain  in  all 
their  main  features  throughout  his  life. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  143 

In  the  University  of  Alabama  there  had  more  than  once 
been  temporary  disorders  among  the  students  which  had 
been  serious  enough  to  cause  embarrassment  to  the  Faculty 
and  to  bring  down  upon  them  the  animadversions  of  the 
press  of  the  State.  One  result  of  these  events  was  to 
induce  Professor  Barnard  to  publish,  chiefly  in  The  Mobile 
Register,  a  series  of  "Letters  on  College  Government" 
which  will  be  mentioned  below.  Another  result  was 
an  effort  to  reconstruct  the  whole  plan  of  the  Univer- 
sity, on  the  model  of  the  University  of  Virginia,  which 
seemed  to  him  to  be,  at  least,  premature.  Its  most 
prominent  advocate  was  the  Hon.  Henry  W.  Collier,  a 
former  governor  of  Alabama,  who  had  been,  as  governor, 
president  ex  officio  of  the  Board  of  Trustees  of  the  Uni- 
versity. Governor  Collier  and  his  son-in-law,  Professor 
Benagh,  who  held  a  chair  in  the  University,  strenuously 
advocated  their  scheme  in  the  Democratic  paper  of  Tuska- 
loosa  ;  Barnard,  with  the  assistance  of  Professor  Stafford, 
who  held  the  chair  of  Latin,  opposed  it  with  equal  vigor 
in  the  Whig  organ.  For  a  time  the  controversy  was  kept 
up  week  by  week  with  some  warmth,  but  without  invidi- 
ous personalities.  At  length,  however,  Governor  Collier 
had  the  indiscretion  to  refer  to  his  opponents  as  a  Yankee 
who  had  no  sympathies  with  the  South  and  a  narrow- 
minded  South  Carolinian  who  could  see  no  merit  in  any 
educational  institution  but  the  University  of  South 
Carolina. 

This  article  [says  Barnard]  was  brought  to  my  notice  one 
day  as  I  was  sitting  at  the  editorial  table  of  the  Tuskaloosa 
Monitor,  which  was  my  own  organ,  and  it  had  its  natural 
effect.  I  seized  a  pen  and  dashed  off  on  the  spot  a  para- 
graph beginning  with  the  words,  "  I  avow  myself  the  author 
of  the  articles  which  have  appeared  in  the  editorial  columns 
of  this  paper  on  the  proposed  reorganization  of  the  Univer- 


144  MEMOIRS  OF 

sity."  After  this  introduction,  I  proceeded  to  state  that  I  had 
carefully  observed  the  amenities  of  literary  discussion  and  had 
not  written  a  word  which  could  be  considered  personally  offen- 
sive to  any  individual,  but  that  since  my  opponent  had  dis- 
played a  different  spirit  and  was  apparently  disposed  to  take 
advantage  of  a  presumed  eminence  of  position  to  crush  an 
adversary  whom  he  could  not  overpower  in  argument,  I 
would  disregard  conventionalities  as  thoroughly  as  he,  and 
would  give  him  to  understand  that  it  was  not  in  the  power 
of  a  broken-down  politician  to  browbeat  men  of  sense.  The 
ink  was  hardly  dry  on  the  paper  when  my  colleague,  Professor 
Stafford,  came  in.  The  manuscript  was  submitted  to  him  and 
with  his  approval  it  went  immediately  to  press.  On  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  paper  there  was  no  small  stir  in  Tuskaloosa. 
Governor  Collier  appeared  before  the  Board  with  a  manuscript 
which  it  took  him  nearly  an  hour  to  read.  He  professed  to 
give  a  history  of  the  controversy,  and  accused  me  of  libelling 
him  by  describing  him  as  "  a  broken-down  politician,"  a  desig- 
nation which  he  maintained  to  be  untrue,  but  which  was  cer- 
tainly true,  since,  after  his  term  as  Governor,  he  had  failed  of 
promotion  to  the  dignity  of  Senator  of  the  United  States  and 
had  been  quietly  retired  to  private  life.  In  conclusion  he  de- 
manded my  removal  from  office  as  a  punishment  for  my  offence. 
When  he  had  finished,  I  inquired  of  the  President  if  I  might 
be  permitted  to  speak.  Governor  Collier  had  been  heard  as  a 
matter  of  courtesy  due  to  a  former  member  of  the  Board, 
and  I  had  not  the  same  claim  to  a  personal  hearing;  conse- 
quently, I  was  informed  that  the  Board  would  consider  any 
written  defence  I  might  wish  to  submit,  and  for  that  purpose 
the  clerk  was  instructed  to  hand  me  Governor  Collier's  manu- 
script. I  retired  to  an  adjacent  room  and  drew  up  a  brief  but 
resolute  reply.  I  declared  that  the  offence  with  which  I  was 
charged  was  one  of  which  the  Board  had  no  jurisdiction ;  that 
I  was  charged  with  no  offence  against  my  superiors ;  and  that, 
if  I  had  libelled  the  Governor,  as  he  alleged,  he  had  his 
remedy  in  an  appeal  to  the  civil  courts,  where  his  complaint 
could  be  tried  by  a  jury  before  a  tribunal  of  competent  juris- 
diction. On  these  grounds  I  said  it  was  unnecessary  for  me  to 
discuss  the  merits  of  the  charge  before  the  Board  of  Trustees. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  145 

My  communication  was  immediately  sent  to  the  Board,  and 
in  half  an  hour  one  of  the  trustees  came  to  tell  me  that  the 
cause  had  been  dismissed. 

After  this  unpleasant  incident,  The  Mobile  Register^ 
in  which  Professor  Barnard's  "Letters  on  College  Gov- 
ernment "  had  been  appearing,  declined  to  continue  to  pub- 
lish them,  and  the  remainder  of  the  series  was  published 
in  a  Montgomery  newspaper.  Fragmentary  as  they  nec- 
essarily were  in  consequence  of  their  form,  they  attracted 
considerable  attention  at  the  North  as  well  as  at  the 
South,  and  in  deference  to  many  urgent  requests,  they 
were  republished  by  the  Messrs.  Appleton  in  the  follow- 
ing year.  It  is  not  easy  to  condense  the  contents  of 
these  twelve  letters ;  but  it  is  certainly  necessary  to  give 
a  general  view  of  their  scope  and  purport. 

At  the  very  opening  of  his  first  letter  Professor  Bar- 
nard prepared  the  way  for  the  avowedly  radical  conclusion 
which  he  intended  to  reach.  He  frankly  admitted  that 
the  strictures  of  the  press  on  the  conduct  of  the  Faculty 
of  the  Alabama  University  indicated  the  existence  of  some 
defect  in  the  American  college  system  to  which  it  was 
desirable  that  the  attention  of  the  community  should  be 
directed ;  and  he  urged  that  the  defect,  whatever  it  might 
be,  must  be  inherent  in  the  system,  since  virtually  the 
same  system  existed  in  all  American  colleges,  and  was 
everywhere  attended  with  the  same  difficulties  of  admin- 
istration and  with  similar  complaints  of  mismanagement. 
The  criticisms  to  which  the  authorities  of  the  Alabama 
University  had  been  subjected  were  directed  against  the 
laws  by  which  they  were  governed  and  against  certain 
disciplinary  customs  which  were  prevalent  in  all  colleges; 
but  those  laws  and  customs  were  alike  parts  of  a  system 
to  the  integrity  of  which  they  were  essential,  so  that,  if 
reform  was  necessary,  it  was  the  system  itself,  and  not 


146  MEMOIRS   OF 

merely  the  subordinate  incidents  of  the  system,  which 
ought  to  be  reformed. 

In  colleges,  as  in  all  other  communities,  some  laws  were 
necessary,  and  laws  which  provided  no  penalties  to  be 
inflicted  on  the  lawless  would  be  futile.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  the  lawful  governing  body  of  any  community 
should  be  deprived  of  the  necessary  means  of  discovering 
the  perpetrators  of  unlawful  acts,  it  would  be  reduced  to 
a  condition  of  helpless  inefficiency.  No  civil  community 
could  continue  to  exist  under  such  conditions,  and  there- 
fore the  laws  of  every  civil  community  make  it  the 
bounden  duty  of  its  citizens  or  subjects  to  aid  the  gov- 
ernment by  giving  testimony,  whenever  required,  con- 
cerning real  or  alleged  breaches  of  public  order  and  the 
persons  by  whom  they  have  been  committed.  In  the 
investigation  of  offences  the  civil  laws  pay  no  respect  to 
personal  scruples.  When  the  citizen  is  called  as  a  witness, 
he  is  required  to  tell  what  he  knows  of  the  case  in  hand, 
and  the  witness,  so  constrained,  incurs  no  condemnation 
for  complying  with  the  necessary  demands  of  the  law. 
In  other  communities,  into  which  persons  enter  volun- 
tarily for  their  own  advantage,  and  to  the  laws  of  which 
they  consent  to  submit,  it  is  equally  necessary  that  they 
should  be  ready,  when  lawfully  required,  to  aid  the  gov- 
erning body  in  the  detection  and  punishment  of  offenders 
against  the  laws  of  such  communities. 

It  was  on  this  principle  that  most  of  the  older  colleges 
of  the  country  had  framed  their  laws.  The  statute  of 
Yale  College  was  framed  in  the  following  language : 

Whenever  a  student  shall  be  required  by  one  of  the  Faculty 
to  disclose  his  knowledge  concerning  any  disorder,  offence  or 
offender,  against  a  law  of  the  College,  and  shall  refuse  to  make 
such  disclosure,  he  may  be  sent  home  or  dismissed.  No  student 
shall  be  questioned  for  any  testimony  he  may  give  in  regard 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  147 

to  a  violation  of  a  law  of  this  College ;  and  in  case  any  student 
shall  so  question  his  fellow-student  to  ascertain  whether  he 
hath  testified,  or  with  intent  to  bring  into  contempt  any  stu- 
dent because  be  hath  testified,  the  student  so  acting  shall  be 
deemed  to  have  committed  an  offence,  and  may  be  proceeded 
against  by  the  Faculty  according  to  the  aggravation  of  the 
offence,  even  to  dismission. 

Notwithstanding  the  apparent  reasonableness  of  this 
statute,  its  enforcement  was  always  difficult  because  of 
an  invincible  repugnance  on  the  part  of  students  to  appear 
in  the  character  of  informers  against  their  fellow-students. 
While  at  Yale,  Professor  Barnard  had  learned  in  his  own 
experience  that  the  popular  sentiment  of  the  College  had 
not  been  adverse  to  good  discipline.  It  "favored  the 
view  that  it  is  well  that  law  shall  have  its  course,  that 
it  is  well  that  offenders  shall  be  reached  and  dealt  with, 
that  it  is  well  that  good  order  and  good  morals  shall  be 
preserved,  but  that  it  is  not  well  that  a  student  shall 
become  an  informer  upon  his  fellow-student."  The  power 
of  popular  sentiment  among  students  is  immense.  The 
sense  of  the  obligation  of  comradeship  is  so  imperious  as 
to  compel  young  men  of  the  highest  character  and  conduct 
virtually  to  enter  into  a  combination  for  the  protection  of 
others  with  whom  they  have  no  personal  association,  and 
whose  irregularities  they  strongly  disapprove.  The  best 
laws  fail  when  they  cannot  be  enforced,  and  in  the  most 
critical  cases,  that  is  in  the  most  important  cases,  the 
Yale  law  could  not  be  enforced  because  it  was  not  sus- 
tained by  the  public  sentiment  of  the  community  in  which 
it  was  to  be  applied. 

In  Southern  colleges  it  was  impossible  to  enforce  the 
Yale  law,  which  was  opposed  to  the  general  sentiment 
of  the  people  as  well  as  to  the  popular  feeling  of  students. 
Still,  it  was  indispensable  that  college  authorities  should 


148  MEMOIRS   OF 

have  some  means  of  ascertaining  the  facts  arising  in  cases 
of  discipline,  and  therefore  a  different  law  was  framed, 
under  which  the  student  should  not  be  required  to  testify 
against  a  fellow-student,  but  might  be  required  at  least  to 
declare  whether  he  himself  were  innocent  of  the  offence 
under  investigation.  This  law,  known  as  the  "  exculpation 
law,"  had  been  adopted  by  the  University  of  Alabama 
from  the  code  of  the  University  of  South  Carolina,  and 
was  expressed  as  follows  : 

In  ordinary  cases,  and  for  mere  college  misdemeanors,  no 
student  shall  be  called  upon  to  give  information  against 
another;  but  when  several  persons  are  known  to  contain 
among  them  the  guilty  person  or  persons,  that  the  innocent 
may  not  suffer  equally  with  the  guilty,  they  are  all  liable  to 
be  severally  called  up,  and  each  to  be  put  upon  his  own  ex- 
culpation, unless  the  magnanimity  of  the  guilty  shall  relieve 
the  Faculty  from  the  necessity  of  this  expedient,  by  an  in- 
genuous confession  of  his  or  their  own  fault.  If  any  student, 
when  thus  permitted  to  declare  his  innocence,  shall  decline  to 
exculpate  himself,  he  shall  be  considered  as  taking  the  guilt 
of  the  offence  upon  himself  and  encountering  all  the  conse- 
quences. If  a  student  shall  deny  that  he  is  guilty,  that  shall 
be  taken  as  prima  fade  evidence  of  his  innocence ;  but  if  it 
shall  afterwards  appear  from  satisfactory  evidence  that  he 
was  really  guilty,  he  shall  be  considered  unworthy  to  remain 
in  the  University. 

It  was  under  the  exculpation  law  that  recent  difficulties 
had  been  encountered  in  the  University  of  Alabama,  and 
the  public  opinion  of  the  State,  as  represented  by  the 
press,  had  sustained  the  students  who  had  refused  to  obey 
that  law.  Professor  Barnard  did  not  defend  the  law,  and 
indeed  it  was  objectionable  in  more  ways  than  one.  It 
was  utterly  inconsistent  with  the  maxim  of  the  common 
law,  that  every  person  shall  be  presumed  to  be  innocent 
until  he  is  proved  to  be  guilty.  The  common  law  assumes 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  149 

that  an  accused  person  who  declines  to  plead,  pleads  Not 
Guilty  ;  but  the  exculpation  law  visited  with  the  penalty 
of  guilt  a  person  who  was  actually  not  accused,  unless  he 
would  asseverate  his  innocence.  Moreover,  its  application 
might  result  in  extreme  injustice,  since  an  offence  against 
the  exculpation  law  might  involve  no  worse  fault  than 
obedience  to  a  mistaken  sense  of  honor,  and  yet  it  was  to 
be  construed  and  punished  as  the  admission  of  an  offence 
which  might  be  of  the  utmost  turpitude.  To  the  mind 
of  the  student  the  exculpation  law  was  deprived  of  the 
essential  element  of  respectability  because  it  aimed,  by 
means  of  an  ingenious  indirection,  to  compel  him  to  do 
what  it  confessed  that  he  ought  not  to  be  required  to  do. 
It  admitted  the  broad  principle  that  one  student  ought 
not  to  be  required  to  give  information  against  another  ; 
and  yet  its  purpose  and  effect  were  to  compel  students 
who  were  innocent  to  denounce  the  guilty  by  a  mere 
process  of  elimination.  In  practice,  too,  there  could  be 
no  assurance  that  the  law  would  not  be  subversive  of  all 
justice,  since  an  unscrupulous  offender  might  go  free  by 
simply  affirming  his  innocence,  while  an  honorable  and 
truthful,  but  too  generous  or  too  scrupulous  man  might 
incur  the  penalty  of  an  offence  which  he  was  incapable  of 
committing. 

Professor  Barnard  did  not  defend  the  exculpation  law. 

I  can  never  believe  [he  said]  that  any  law  which  meets  the 
disapprobation  of  the  public  is  a  good  law.  The  efficacy  of  law 
is  not  to  be  looked  for  in  the  pains  and  penalties  it  denounces, 
so  much  as  in  the  support  and  approval  of  all  good  men. 
Whatever  enactment  fails  to  secure  these,  fails  of  the  most 
essential  element  of  moral  power.  It  matters  not  whether  it 
be  intrinsically  good  or  bad;  it  is  enough  to  make  it  bad, 
whatever  be  its  intrinsic  excellence,  that  the  community  who 
witness  its  enforcement  regard  it  as  oppressive  and.  wrong. 


150  MEMOIRS   OF 

What  more  is  necessary  to  undermine  the  efficacy  of  any 
law  than  to  crown  with  applause  those  who  resist  its  opera- 
tions, and  to  canonize  its  victims  as  martyrs  to  a  glorious 
cause  ? 

Yet  he  did  not  admit  that  the  exculpation  law  must  nec- 
essarily be  wrong  in  itself,  merely  because  public  opinion 
was  adverse  to  it.  The  old  maxim,  Vox  populi  vox  Dei, 
must  be  taken  with  large  limitations.  Thus  "  the  law  of 
Congress  providing  for  the  arrest  and  delivery  of  fugitive 
slaves  is  certainly  a  good  law;  yet,  throughout  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  States  for  which  it  is  designed,  there 
is  no  division  of  opinion  at  all  as  to  its  wrongfulness. 
Those  who  give  it  their  support  —  politicians,  editors, 
ministers  of  the  Gospel,  even  judges  on  the  bench  —  do  so, 
avowedly,  for  no  other  reason  than  because  it  is  a  law,  and 
not  because  they  approve  of  its  provisions."  Under  the 
existing  system  of  college  organization  it  was  evident  that 
some  law  requiring  students  to  give  evidence  in  cases  of 
disorder  of  which  students  alone  could  generally  be  wit- 
nesses, was  clearly  necessary.  The  Yale  law  demanded 
their  evidence  in  such  cases  on  principles  acknowledged 
and  applied  in  all  civil  communities,  and  college  authorities 
were  no  more  bound  than  other  lawful  authorities  to  pay 
respect  to  the  scruples  of  witnesses.  If  the  Yale  law  had 
failed  in  its  operation  in  certain  instances  because  it  was 
opposed  by  popular  opinion  among  the  students,  it  had  at 
least  been  founded  on  a  principle  which  the  general  public 
upheld.  The  Southern  colleges,  in  adopting  the  exculpa- 
tion law,  had  abandoned  that  principle.  Until  they  did 
so,  popular  opinion,  even  among  the  students,  had  not  uni- 
versally and  unanimously  stigmatized  the  giving  of  testi- 
mony as  an  act  of  flagrant  dishonor.  Yet  the  adoption  of 
the  exculpation  law  had  been  a  concession  to  public  opin- 
ion; and  if  it  did  not  work  well,  the  only  alternative  was 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  151 

to  return  to  the  Yale  law,  a  course  which  no  one  had  pro- 
posed. No  third  method  of  meeting  the  necessities  of 
college  discipline  had  been  suggested. 

It  was  not  college  faculties  that  had  raised  this  dilemma. 
They  themselves  were  confronted  with  it.  Unless  they 
were  to  renounce  all  discipline,  they  must  adopt  the  one 
law  or  the  other.  In  the  University  of  Alabama  they 
had  the  exculpation  law,  and  they  had  chosen  to  call  it 
into  operation  only  on  rare  occasions  and  in  cases  of  ex- 
traordinary difficulty.  They  had  regarded  and  used  it  as  a 
power  to  be  held  strictly  in  reserve;  and,  used  in  that  way, 
it  had  been  a  real  power.  College  life  is  an  enjoyable  life 
even  to  men  who  do  not  fully  realize  its  educational  advan- 
tages. It  has  its  ambitions  which  the  student  does  not 
willingly  abandon.  For  the  serious  it  has  benefits  which 
extend  to  their  whole  subsequent  career.  No  student  can 
contemplate  an  expulsion  from  college  otherwise  than  as 
a  grave  misfortune.  Martyrdom  is  seldom  sought  with 
eagerness,  and  students  are  no  fonder  of  martyrdom  than 
other  people.  Consequently,  when  the  student  knows  that 
the  faculty  holds  in  reserve  a  power  which  may  compel 
him  to  submit  to  martyrdom  unless  the  ordinary  means 
of  discipline  suffice,  his  interests  and  his  inclinations  must 
alike  lead  him  to  desire  that  the  ordinary  means  shall  be 
successful.  Thus,  to  the  very  moment  of  conflict  with  the 
faculty  under  the  exculpation  law,  the  sympathy  and  influ- 
ence of  the  student  were  enlisted  on  the  side  of  the  faculty, 
and  were  more  than  likely  to  obviate  the  necessity  of  using 
the  reserved  power  which  is  conferred  by  the  provisions  of 
that  law. 

Having  thus  vindicated  the  action  of  the  faculty  of  the 
University  in  applying,  on  extreme  occasions,  and  on  such 
occasions  only,  the  power  conferred  upon  them  by  a  law 
which  he  conceded  to  be  objectionable,  and  having  shown 


152  MEMOIRS   OF 

that  the  only  substitute  for  that  law  was  another  ob- 
jectionable law  which  had  been  deliberately  rejected  by 
the  Southern  colleges,  he  left  it  to  be  inferred  that  a  col- 
lege system  for  which  no  satisfactory  law  of  discipline 
could  be  devised  must  be  a  defective  system.  He  next 
proceeded  to  meet  an  objection  which  had  been  strongly 
made  to  the  official  visitation  of  students'  rooms  by 
members  of  the  faculty. 

The  visitation  of  rooms  by  the  professors  had  been  cen- 
sured mainly  on  two  grounds  :  first,  that  it  was  an  in- 
vasion of  the  natural  right  of  the  student  to  the  privacy 
of  his  own  room ;  and,  second,  that  its  object  was  to 
obtain  by  sly  and  stealthy  methods  a  knowledge  of  of- 
fences against  good  discipline  which  could  not  be  secured 
by  fair  and  honorable  means.  The  mere  existence  of 
such  an  impression  among  the  students,  Professor  Bar- 
nard observed,  must  be  fatal  to  good  order,  since  it  must 
effectually  destroy  their  confidence  in  the  good  will  and 
honorable  conduct  of  their  superiors.  The  very  first 
requisite  in  a  governor  of  youth  is  the  power  to  win  the 
confidence  of  those  who  are  set  under  his  authority;  and 
the  very  best  of  men,  if  he  should  lack  that  indispensable 
faculty,  might  be,  and  probably  would  be,  an  exceedingly 
bad  governor  of  a  college.  The  power  to  win  confidence 
depends  in  most  cases  rather  on  manner  than  on  right 
purpose,  since  it  is  chiefly  by  manner  that  a  right  and 
kindly  purpose  is  made  known  to  those  who  are  affected 
by  it.  But  confidence,  like  love,  is  a  sentiment  which 
wins  reciprocation  ;  and  no  college  officer  can  expect  the 
confidence  of  students  unless  he  reposes  confidence  in  them. 

A  wise  college  officer  will  invariably  treat  the  student  as 
if  he  believed  him  to  intend  rightly.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten 
he  will  be  able  to  do  so  from  conviction ;  and  if,  in  the  tenth  case, 
circumstances  arise  to  create  a  doubt,  he  will  frankly  state  the 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  153 

circumstances  and  afford  an  opportunity  for  an  explanation  of 
them.  By  adopting  this  course  he  will  be  met,  in  ninety-nine 
cases  out  of  a  hundred,  in  a  spirit  of  equal  frankness,  and 
will  remove  the  strongest  of  the  temptations  by  which  youths 
are  led  to  engage  in  violations  of  the  rules  of  order.  To 
attempt  to  impose  upon  his  confidence  will  be  regarded  as  an 
act  of  treachery,  which  is  the  most  odious  of  all  crimes  in  the 
eyes  of  generous  young  men. 

In  endeavoring  to  learn  how  the  time  of  students  is 
employed  when  they  are  not  under  his  immediate  super- 
vision, a  wise  teacher  will  resort  to  no  means  which  are 
not  open  and  straightforward.  In  certain  natures  there 
is  an  element  of  suspicion  which  makes  it  difficult  to  trust 
others,  and  such  persons  may  find  it  impossible  to  resist 
the  temptation  to  adopt  devices  of  vigilance  which  amount 
to  systematic  espionage.  No  information  so  obtained  is 
likely  to  be  of  real  benefit  to  either  party ;  and  when  the 
practice  of  espionage  is  suspected  by  the  student,  the 
moral  power  of  the  governor  is  broken  forever.  It  would 
be  an  instructive  inquiry,  if  it  could  be  successfully  pros- 
ecuted, whether  many  college  difficulties  have  not  had 
their  origin  in  the  irritation  of  students  laboring  under 
the  impression  that  their  footsteps  are  dogged,  their 
private  conduct  watched,  and  their  careless  words  noted 
down  to  be  reported  against  them.  Such  a  suspicion, 
however  unfounded,  is  utterly  mischievous,  and  whatever 
tends  to  produce  it  is  mischievous.  But  college  officers 
seldom  give  just  occasion  for  suspicions  of  that  sort. 
Most  of  them  exhibit  a  real  frankness  and  confidence 
towards  their  students  which  secures  an  unreserved  recip- 
rocation of  the  same  sentiments.  In  the  University  of 
Alabama  it  was  not  charged  that  the  professors  had  de- 
served, or  that  the  students  had  entertained,  a  charge  of 
unworthy  methods  of  espionage.  It  was  the  system  of 


154  MEMOIRS   OF 

visitation  in  itself  which  was  condemned  ;  and  as  a  part 
of  the  existing  system  of  college  discipline  Professor 
Barnard  maintained  that  the  visitation  system  was  not 
only  defensible,  but  indispensable. 

In  principle  it  involved  no  wrong,  and  invaded  no 
natural  right  of  the  student.  The  college  received  him 
as  a  student  on  the  express  condition  that  he  should  con- 
sent to  yield  up  a  portion  of  his  time  to  be  used  under 
the  direction  of  the  faculty.  Colleges  may,  and  often  do, 
require  the  attendance  of  the  student  in  the  class-room, 
not  only  during  the  hours  of  lecture  or  recitation,  but 
also  during  the  hours  of  preparation.  When  this  require- 
ment is  waived,  and  the  student  is  permitted  to  spend  his 
hours  of  preparatory  study  in  his  own  apartment,  it  is 
not  intended  nor  implied  that  he  is  to  be  at  liberty  to 
spend  those  hours  at  his  own  discretion  in  something  else 
than  study ;  and  the  visitation  of  rooms  during  those 
hours  is  a  practical  and  necessary  assertion  of  the  fact 
that  those  hours  are  not  his  own,  but  are  to  be  used  for 
educational  purposes  under  the  supervision  of  the  college 
authorities.  Beyond  those  hours  the  system  of  visitation 
of  rooms  did  not  extend.  "  Outside  of  those  hours,  so 
long  as  no  disorder  occurs  to  require  interposition,  the 
privacy  of  the  dormitories  is  as  much  respected  by  the 
authorities  as  that  of  the  Grand  Turk's  seraglio  by  all 
good  Mussulmans." 

Thus  the  visitation  system,  as  practised  in  the  Uni- 
versity, was  both  right  and  reasonable  ;  and  it  was  not 
the  Faculty,  but  the  students,  who  had  found  it  to  be 
indispensable.  For  a  year  or  two,  while  the  number  of 
students  was  small,  the  Faculty  had  practised  no  visita- 
tion of  the  rooms,  even  in  study  hours.  When  the  num- 
ber was  increased,  visitation  was  begun  at  the  express 
request  of  the  students  themselves,  because  those  who 


FREDERICK  A.   P.    BARNARD  155 

were  disposed  to  study  found  their  time  so  encroached 
upon,  and  their  quiet  so  disturbed,  by  others  who  were 
not  studious,  that  they  requested  the  Faculty  to  protect 
them  by  introducing  the  visitation  of  rooms.  If  the  ex- 
periment were  to  be  repeated,  Professor  Barnard  expressed 
the  conviction  that  it  would  end  in  the  same  way.  Habits 
of  lounging  from  room  to  room  do  not  grow  up  in  a  day, 
and  therefore  the  necessity  of  visitation  might  not  be 
immediately  apparent ;  but  in  a  community  consisting  of 
a  hundred  or  two  of  young  men  brought  together  at 
random  and  changing  from  year  to  year,  lounging  and 
waste  of  time  in  profitless  trivialities  would  surely  occur 
to  an  extent  which  would  demand  the  protection  of  the 
studious  from  constant  and  aimless  interruption  by  the 
idle.  Hence  the  visitation  of  rooms,  to  which  such 
strenuous  objections  had  been  adduced,  was  no  system  of 
espial,  but  rather  a  kindness  to  the  students  themselves. 
It  was  regrettable,  perhaps,  that  its  official  character 
somewhat  obscured  its  real  intention.  It  was  eminently 
desirable  that  the  manner  of  the  visiting  officer  should 
always  be  such  as  to  indicate  that  he  was  there  in  the 
capacity,  not  of  an  official  authority  so  much  as  in  that  of 
a  kindly  and  helpful  friend.  It  would  be  well,  too,  both 
for  students  and  professors,  if  there  were  somewhat  more 
intercourse  between  them  at  times  when  the  artificial 
relations  of  instructor  and  pupil  might  be  forgotten,  or 
at  least  kept  out  of  sight.  The  consequence  would  be 
the  forming  of  personal  ties  and  the  growth  of  a  mutual 
understanding  which  would  contribute,  more  than  any- 
thing else  could,  to  the  harmony  and  happiness  of  the 
college  community. 

On  the  part  of  officers  it  is  often  difficult,  or  even  impos- 
sible, to  do  in  this  way  as  much  as  they  would ;  both  because 
of  the  pressure  of  burdens  public  and  private  and  because  of 


156  MEMOIRS   OF 

the  large  number  of  the  young  men  between  whom  their  atten- 
tion must  be  divided ;  but  they  might  invite  and  encourage  the 
visits  of  the  students  to  themselves,  so  far  as  their  arrange- 
ments will  allow,  and  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  they 
should  reciprocate  such  visits  whenever  it  may  be  in  their 
power.  It  is  my  candid  opinion  that  all  the  laws  which  were 
ever  enacted  for  the  good  government  of  colleges  are  weak  and 
nugatory  compared  with  that  boundless  moral  influence  which 
it  is  possible  for  the  individual  officer  to  acquire  by  winning 
the  affections,  instead  of  operating  on  the  fears,  of  those  whom 
he  instructs.  Perhaps  there  is  no  single  means  so  effectual 
towards  the  accomplishment  of  this  desirable  end  than  that  he 
should  manifest  a  prompt  willingness  to  meet  and  reciprocate 
with  them  all  the  ordinary  courtesies  of  life  in  a  spirit,  and 
with  a  manner,  which  shall  show  that  they  are  something  more 
than  empty  forms. 

The  existing  system  of  college  organization  and  govern- 
ment, Professor  Barnard  proceeded  to  maintain,  demanded 
a  combination  of  characteristics  in  college  officers  which,  in 
the  nature  of  things,  must  be  exceedingly  rare,  and  which 
might  be  wholly  lacking  in  men  of  the  very  highest  capac- 
ity as  instructors.  A  mere  enumeration  of  the  peculiar 
endowments  required  to  fit  men  for  the  difficult  task  of 
college  government  would  show  how  rare  they  were,  and, 
consequently,  how  insecure  a  system  must  be  which  de- 
pended for  its  success  on  conditions  which  could  so  rarely 
be  realized.  The  passage  in  which  the  ideal  college 
officer  is  described  is  here  given  without  abridgment. 

The  first  trait  of  character  which  I  regard  as  essential 
to  the  success  of  a  college  officer,  under  our  present  system  of 
government,  is  one  in  which  few  are  found  to  fail ;  but  which 
rather,  from  its  occasional  predominance  over  the  milder 
traits,  gives  sometimes  something  like  a  tone  of  harshness  to 
the  manner,  which  it  were  better  to  veil ;  and  that  is  firmness. 
No  government  can  succeed  which  fails  to  command  respect, 
and  no  respect  can  be  felt  for  a  vacillating,  timorous,  or  irreso- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  157 

lute  superior.  The  hand  must  be  at  once  strong  and  steady 
which  holds  the  rein  over  the  giddy  impulses  of  heedless  or 
undisciplined  youth ;  nor  will  any  one  be  found  more  ready  to 
admit  this  necessity  than  those,  or  at  least  the  majority  of 
them  —  for  most  young  men  are  ingenuous  —  who  themselves 
need  the  restraint.  But  upon  this  point  it  is  unnecessary  to 
multiply  words,  since  the  absence  of  the  quality  under  consid- 
eration is  rarely  one  of  the  faults  of  an  American  college  officer. 

It  may  be  occasionally  otherwise  in  regard  to  the  quality  of 
which  I  am  next  to  speak,  and  of  which  the  importance  is 
always  most  felt  in  connection  with  the  last.  I  mean  a  mild- 
ness of  manner,  which  divests  the  firmest  government  of  every 
appearance  of  sternness,  and  clothes  the  severest  decrees  of 
justice  with  the  exterior  of  kindness.  The  popular  appreciation 
of  the  value  of  such  a  union  of  qualities  is  manifested  in  the 
frequent  application  of  the  maxim  which,  with  aphoristic 
brevity,  associates  them,  as  the  "  suaviter  in  modo,  fortiter  in  re." 
Napoleon  observed  of  the  French,  that  they  needed  for  their 
control  "  a  hand  of  iron  in  a  glove  of  velvet."  One  of  his  sub- 
jects, who  probably  knew  by  experience  the  feeling  of  the  hand, 
remarked  that  the  great  monarch  never  failed  of  the  iron  grasp, 
but  often  forgot  to  put  on  the  glove.  The  observation  of  the 
French  emperor  is  not  inapplicable  to  the  impulsive  youth  of 
our  American  colleges ;  and  while  I  yield  to  no  one  in  my  con- 
viction of  the  indispensable  necessity  of  firmness  and  decision 
in  college  government,  I  sincerely  believe  that  an  exterior  of 
unvarying  mildness  on  the  part  of  those  who  administer  such 
a  government,  is  a  means  of  preventing  evil  more  efficacious 
than  all  the  penalties  of  the  law  put  together.  If  youthful 
passions,  prompt  to  effervesce,  are  easily  excited,  so  are  they 
quite  as  easily  soothed ;  and  the  fable  of  the  sun  and  the  wind, 
though  it  symbolizes  a  truth  as  universal  as  human  nature,  is 
nowhere  more  strikingly  illustrated  than  within  the  walls  of 
a  college. 

Much,  also,  of  the  success  of  college  government  depends 
upon  the  exercise  of  a  wise  discretion  by  the  officer,  in  regard 
to  the  use  he  may  make  of  his  own  powers.  Because  he  may 
punish,  it  does  not  follow  that  he  always  should  punish, 
whenever  occasion  arises  It  does  not  even  follow  that  he 


158  MEMOIRS    OF 

should  always  betray  his  knowledge  of  the  offence,  farther 
than  to  the  offender  himself.  By  privately  admonishing  the 
individual  of  the  impropriety  of  his  conduct,  and  pointing  out 
to  him  the  danger  to  which  he  has  exposed  himself,  much  more 
good  may  often  be  accomplished,  in  the  way  of  prevention 
and  reformation,  than  by  all  the  disgrace  attendant  on  public 
rebuke  and  censure.  When  such  a  course  is  possible,  it  is 
obviously  the  wisest,  as  it  is  the  kindest  and  most  forbearing. 
But  such  a  mode  of  proceeding  may  not  always  answer  the 
purpose ;  and  on  this  account  it  is,  that  no  quality  of  mind  is 
of  higher  value  in  the  officer  than  a  clear  and  discreet  judg- 
ment. Censures,  penalties,  punishments  of  all  kinds,  are 
unavoidable  necessities  arising  out  of  the  imperfection  of 
human  nature;  but  as  their  main  design,  in  human  institu- 
tions, is  the  prevention  of  offences,  so  the  less  these  are  re- 
sorted to,  consistently  with  the  attainment  of  this  end,  the  better. 
It  is  not  an  unfrequent  occurrence  that  a  young  man  in  col- 
lege feels  himself  aggrieved  by  something  which  has  occurred 
between  him  and  his  instructor.  He  may  imagine  that  a  fair 
hearing  has  not  been  given  him  in  the  recitation  room ;  or  he 
may  interpret  in  an  injurious  sense  words  addressed  to  him 
in  the  hearing  of  his  class ;  or  he  may  believe  that  he  has  not 
been  rated  as  high  on  the  record  as  his  performances  merit; 
or  some  other  cause  of  dissatisfaction  may  arise,  to  induce 
him  to  remonstrate  or  complain.  Nor  should  the  instruc- 
tor turn  from  such  representations  contemptuously  away. 
Patience  should  be  one  of  his  marked  characteristics ;  and  he 
will  probably  never  find  it  more  thoroughly  tried  than  on  occa- 
sions of  this  kind.  For  if  he  possess  the  qualities  I  have 
already  enumerated,  especially  the  last  two  named,  he  will 
have  been  steadily  laboring  against  the  very  errors  which  he 
sees  thus  imputed  to  him,  and  he  must  feel  that  his  intention 
is  certainly  wronged,  whatever  impression  his  words  or  acts 
may  have  conveyed.  But  this  must  not  provoke  him  to  listen 
any  the  less  patiently,  or  to  explain  any  the  less  circumstan- 
tially, the  occurrences  out  of  which  the  dissatisfaction  has 
grown,  nor,  if  he  pursues  such  a  course,  will  he  usually  fail 
to  dispel  the  momentary  chagrin  and  reestablish  the  feeling 
of  confidence  and  kindness  which  it  had  temporarily  disturbed. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  159 

I  need  not  say  how  important  it  is  that  the  college  officer, 
whether  in  dispensing  censure  or  praise,  should  be  actuated 
by  no  feeling  of  favor  on  the  one  hand,  or  of  prejudice  on  the 
other.  There  exists  no  higher  necessity  in  the  civil  courts, 
that  justice  should  be  meted  out  with  severe  impartiality,  than 
that  the  same  principle  should  preside  over  all  the  awards  of 
college  authorities.  No  more  frequent  charge  is  advanced 
against  the  officers  of  our  literary  institutions  than  that  they 
are  partial.  The  partiality  alleged  to  exist  is  more  commonly 
one  of  favor  than  the  contrary;  but  we  hear  it  sometimes 
asserted,  nevertheless,  that  the  prejudices  of  officers  blind  them 
to  the  merits  of  certain  individuals,  or  lead  them  to  exercise 
toward  such  an  undue  severity.  As  a  general  rule,  it  may  be 
said  that  these  imputations  are  unfounded.  The  disregard 
with  which,  often  as  they  are  made,  they  are  treated  by  the 
public,  shows  that  they  are  considered  to  be,  as  on  the  slight- 
est estimate  of  probabilities  they  must  appear,  entirely  base- 
less. They  point  out,  nevertheless,  a  quality  which  it  is 
absolutely  indispensable  that  the  college  officer  should  possess ; 
while  they  admonish  us  that  it  is  not  the  possession  alone,  but 
the  reputation  of  possessing  —  I  refer  to  the  reputation  within 
the  college  itself  —  which  the  judicious  officer  will  aim  to 
secure. 

It  may  be  observed  that  the  most  cautious  wisdom  will  not 
always  preserve  to  the  most  judicious  college  officer  the  invari- 
able and  unfailing  good  will  of  those  whom  it  is  his  duty  to 
control.  Certain  ebullitions  of  temper  on  the  part  of  excitable 
young  men  may  prompt  them  to  hasty  words  or  acts,  well 
suited  to  subvert  the  equanimity  of  any  one  however  by 
nature  imperturbable.  Yet  the  imperturbability  of  a  college 
officer  should  be  superior  to  all  such  provocations.  He  should 
tranquilly  suffer  the  moment  of  excitement  to  pass  by;  and 
allow  the  offender,  under  the  influence  of  the  self-rebuke  usually 
consequent  upon  reflection,  to  make  the  reparation  which  the 
case  demands.  To  allow  himself  to  become  excited,  is  but  to 
widen  the  breach  and  render  it  irreparable ;  when  but  a  single 
consequence  can  possibly  follow.  He  who  has  set  at  defiance 
the  authorities  of  the  college,  or  treated  its  representative 
with  gross  disrespect,  can  no  longer  remain  a  member  of  the 


160  MEMOIRS   OF 

institution.  The  necessity,  therefore,  of  great  power  of  self- 
command  on  the  part  of  a  college  officer  is  obvious;  for 
though  the  occasions  which  may  severely  try  it  can  never  be 
frequent,  yet  the  want  of  it,  whenever  they  occur,  is  a  mis- 
fortune for  which  nothing  can  adequately  compensate. 

I  have  but  one  thing  more  to  add.  To  a  wise  college  gov- 
ernor, the  word  INEXORABLE  will  be  unknown.  The  faults  of 
youth  are  usually  faults  of  impulse  rather  than  of  deliberate 
purpose.  They  evince  not  so  much  settled  wickedness  as 
thoughtless  folly,  or  giddy  recklessness  of  disposition.  Few 
so  immature  in  years  as  are  the  majority  of  college  youth  are 
already  entirely  abandoned ;  while  it  is  a  fact  almost  without 
exception,  that  those  among  almost  every  body  of  students 
who  have  passed  the  climacteric  which  separates  them  from 
boyhood,  have  ceased  any  longer  to  require  the  restraining 
influence  of  college  governments.  The  culprits,  then,  who  are 
brought  to  the  bar  of  college  justice,  are  almost  invariably 
boys  whom  vice  has  not  had  time  utterly  to  subjugate,  and 
whose  consciences  are  not  yet  callous  to  every  appeal.  From 
such,  when  they  repent,  a  considerate  governor  will  be  slow 
to  turn  unfeelingly  away ;  nor  while  there  remains  room  for 
pardon  will  he  hesitate  to  extend  it  to  them.  He  will  remem- 
ber that  on  his  decision  perhaps  hangs  the  entire  destiny  of 
the  offender  for  this  world,  if  not  for  another;  and  no  con- 
siderations but  such  as  involve  the  interests  of  the  entire 
community  over  which  he  is  placed  as  a  guardian  will  prevent 
his  accepting  the  evidence  of  sincere  repentance  as  an  expia- 
tion of  the  most  serious  fault. 

But  were  all  college  officers  gifted  in  the  highest  degree 
with  the  qualities  which  I  have  enumerated,  I  do  not  know 
that  it  would  follow  that  troubles  would  be  impossible.  I 
only  know  that  the  non-existence  of  these  endowments,  to  at 
least  a  pretty  large  extent,  leaves  open  a  wide  door  for  their 
entrance.  It  is  true,  therefore,  that  the  existing  college  sys- 
tem is  dependent  for  its  successful  operation,  in  a  very  emi- 
nent degree,  upon  the  kind  of  men  to  whom  its  administration 
is  entrusted ;  and  this  fact,  if  it  inheres  in  the  system  only  in 
consequence  of  the  existence  in  the  same  system  of  features 
which  are  inessential  to  the  great  purposes  of  education 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  161 

and  which  admit  of  easy  removal,  is  an  evil  the  more  to  be 
deplored  because  it  is  unnecessary. 

How  had  the  existing  college  system  come  into  exist- 
ence ?  It  had  never  been  deliberately  planned.  It  was 
the  outcome  of  a  series  of  successive  educational  growths 
and  adjustments  in  another  country.  Its  misfortune  was 
that  it  had  been  adopted  here  in  circumstances  to  which 
it  was  not  suited,  and  that  it  attempted,  with  a  defectively 
organized  machinery,  to  accomplish  the  twofold  work  of 
instruction  and  government. 

The  universities  of  England,  on  the  model  of  which 
American  colleges  are  erroneously  supposed  to  have  been 
organized,  assumed  no  responsibility  for  the  conduct  and 
morals  of  the  students.  The  lecturers,  as  they  were 
formerly  called,  —  that  is,  the  professors,  as  they  are  now 
called,  —  did  nothing,  and,  to  this  day,  they  do  nothing, 
but  lecture.  They  never  thought  of  hearing  recitations, 
and  they  had  no  personal  oversight  of  the  students.  Yet, 
for  centuries  after  the  foundation  of  those  universities, 
the  students  attending  them  were  never  regarded  as  men, 
but  merely  as  school -boys  who  required  both  moral  con- 
trol and  personal  drilling  in  their  studies.  To  supply 
these  necessary  things,  monastic  families,  called  colleges 
and  halls,  were  established,  in  which  the  students  were 
boarded,  lodged,  and  governed  by  a  master.  The  master 
of  a  college  was  assisted  by  tutors,  whose  duty  it  was  to  see 
that  the  youths  were  diligent  in  their  studies  and  in  their 
attendance  at  the  lectures,  and  to  the  utmost  of  their 
power  "to  render  them  conformable  to  the  Church  of 
England."  It  was  a  tutor's  duty  to  "  contain  his  pupils 
within  statutory  regulations  in  matters  of  external  appear- 
ance, such  as  their  clothes,  boots,  and  hair."  In  case  the 
urchins  evaded  his  vigilance,  he  himself  was  liable  to  a 


162  MEMOIRS   OP 

fine  of  six  shillings  and  eight  pence  for  the  first,  second, 
and  third  offence;  a  fourth  forfeited  his  office.  But  the 
tutor  had  ample  powers  of  discretionary  discipline.  If 
boys  would  be  boys,  they  were  chastised  like  other  boys. 
Corporal  punishment  was  inflicted  in  the  English  univer- 
sities down  to  the  time  of  Milton,  and  it  was  not  unknown 
in  the  earlier  years  of  Harvard  and  Yale  in  this  country. 
Moreover,  what  would  now  be  called  a  monitorial  system 
was  then  universal  in  the  rude  form  of  fagging,  the 
student,  during  his  freshman  year,  being  the  drudge  of 
students  of  higher  grade,  and  the  whole  body  of  students 
being  compelled  to  observances  towards  college  officers 
which  would  now  be  regarded  as  degrading. 

It  is  true  that  in  English  universities  the  colleges  have 
gradually  undertaken  the  duty  of  teaching  in  addition  to 
that  of  government.  The  tutor  has  practically  supplanted 
the  professor,  and  in  most  things  the  college  has  super- 
seded the  university.  But  if  they  have  undertaken 
much,  they  have  retained  the  power  to  accomplish  it. 
They  have  not,  even  yet,  assumed  that  college  students 
are  "  men";  and  they  have  not  abandoned  the  college  clois- 
ters to  the  almost  exclusive  control  of  their  juvenile  occu- 
pants. The  idea  of  the  monastic  family  is  still  dominant. 

In  those  venerable  institutions  of  Great  Britain,  every  col- 
lege is  a  quadrangle,  securely  walled  in,  with  a  janitor  always 
at  the  door,  and  with  a  definite  hour  for  shutting  in  the  entire 
community  with  bar  and  bolt.  Within  the  same  architectural 
pile  reside  not  only  the  governed,  but  all  the  members  of  the 
governing  body,  from  the  Master  down  to  the  numerous  "  fel- 
lows," one  of  whose  duties  is  to  aid  the  authorities  in  the  pres- 
ervation of  order.  The  whole  college  body,  moreover,  not 
only  resides  under  one  roof,  but  dines  at  one  table ;  so  that,  in 
all  save  the  religious  aspect,  the  distinguishing  features  of  the 
monastic  family  are  kept  conspicuously  prominent  to  this 
day. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  163 

Thus,  something  like  monastic  discipline  is  still  possible 
in  English  colleges,  because  the  means  of  discipline  have 
been  retained  in  the  hands  of  those  by  whom  it  is  to 
be  exercised. 

It  is  not  a  very  great  undertaking  for  a  body  of  govern- 
ors, so  situated  and  possessed  of  such  powers,  to  assume  the 
responsibility  of  maintaining  good  order  in  a  body  of  stu- 
dents trained  from  their  earliest  years  to  respect  authority. 

With  us  in  America  the  case  is  widely  different.  Our  col- 
lege dormitories  are  erected  in  an  isolated  group,  in  the  midst 
of  an  open  area.  No  officers  —  or  here  and  there  only  a  tutor 
—  occupy  rooms  in  those  buildings  at  night ;  in  some  instances 
none  even  by  day.  No  president  or  professor  meets  the  stu- 
dents at  a  common  table;  nor,  in  the  majority  of  colleges,  do 
commons  continue  to  exist.  No  janitor  marks,  or  can  mark,  who 
leaves  the  premises  during  the  hours  devoted  to  study ;  still  less 
who  steals  away  or  returns  at  those  unwarrantable  hours  of 
darkness,  when  nearly  every  one  of  the  offences  most  ruinous 
to  good  conduct  and  most  difficult  to  manage  is  usually  perpe- 
trated. Within  itself  the  dormitory  is  a  community  shut  out 
with  more  than  Japanese  seclusion  from  the  surrounding  social 
world,  and  subject  to  none  of  the  restraining  influences  by  which 
public  opinion  bears  upon  individuals  in  the  society  to  which 
man  is  born  and  to  which  the  student  must  at  length  return. 

The  majority  of  the  members  of  this  artificial  and 
unnatural  community  are  mere  boys.  In  the  University 
of  Alabama  they  might  be  received  at  the  age  of  four- 
teen, and  very  many  entered  before  the  age  of  sixteen. 
Most  of  the  freshmen  came  directly  from  schools  where 
their  conduct  had  been  subjected,  as  it  was  at  home, 
to  constant  supervision,  and  were  wholly  untrained 
to  habits  of  self-restraint.  Recognized  forthwith  as 
"  men,"  it  was  not  surprising  if  they  misused  their  new- 
found liberty,  nor  was  it  astonishing  if  they  fell  too 
readily  under  the  influence  of  vicious  companions.  The 


164  MEMOIRS   OF 

inequality  in  the  age  of  students,  Professor  Barnard  ol> 
served,  was  a  great  difficulty  in  the  framing  of  general 
rules  for  their  government  when  living  under  a  cloister- 
system.  Rules  which  were  necessary  for  the  younger  lads 
were  needlessly  stringent  and  often  vexatious  to  the  older 
students  ;  so  that,  necessary  as  they  might  be  for  the 
former,  they  might  fail,  and  often  must  fail,  to  have  the 
moral  support  of  the  latter.  In  so  secluded  a  community, 
the  influence  of  public  opinion  is  exceedingly  great,  and 
it  constitutes  a  special  danger  to  the  young. 

The  votaries  of  vice  are  much  more  zealous  in  making  pros- 
elytes than  the  devotees  of  virtue.  The  vile  take  a  malignant 
pleasure  in  marking  the  gradual  steps  by  which  the  pure  in 
heart  become  wicked  like  themselves ;  and  the  unsuspicious, 
unreflecting  nature  of  youth  makes  it  specially  prone  to  yield 
to  those  whose  familiarity  with  what  is  called  life,  but  is  too 
often  only  the  road  to  death,  gives  them  a  seeming  superiority, 
and  lends  to  their  opinions  and  example  a  most  mischievous 
fascination.  College  communities,  like  all  other  isolated  com- 
munities, are  apt  to  be  governed  by  false  principles.  In  the 
college  code,  the  highest  honor  is  not  paid  to  what  is  good  and 
right,  nor  is  the  sternest  disapprobation  directed  against  what 
is  bad  and  wrong.  To  be  gentlemanlike  is  better  than  to  be 
moral ;  to  be  generous  is  more  than  to  be  just.  It  is  much  to 
be  doubted  whether  a  protracted  residence  in  a  community  in 
which  these  false  principles  prevail  can  exert  a  healthful  in- 
fluence upon  the  character,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  its 
influence  upon  the  morals  and  manners  of  the  young  and 
susceptible. 

Yet  this  is  the  community  which  college  faculties  are 
required  to  govern  ab  extra,  and  to  govern  well,  without 
resorting  to  the  most  ordinary  means  of  discovering  of- 
fenders. Dr.  Barnard  denied  it  to  be  possible,  and  he 
asked  whether  there  was  a  single  reason  why  so  impracti- 
cable a  system  should  be  perpetuated.  He  maintained  it 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  165 

to  be  unnatural  to  remove  the  young  from  the  enjoyment 
and  benefit  of  family  sympathies  and  society  at  a  time  of 
life  at  which  these  are  of  the  highest  value,  and  to  plunge 
them  into  an  artificial  community  to  be  assailed  with 
special  allurements  of  temptation.  To  require  a  few  pro- 
fessors, living  outside  of  that  community,  to  guard  the 
morals  and  regulate  the  conduct  of  its  members,  while 
virtually  deprived  of  all  power  of  effectual  discipline,  he 
held  to  be  absurd.  He  pronounced  the  system,  so  far  as 
discipline  was  concerned,  to  have  failed  egregiously,  and 
he  asserted  that  it  had  tended  to  lower  even  the  teaching 
standard  of  college  instructors.  The  governing  faculty 
and  the  teaching  faculty  are  not  always  to  be  found  in 
the  same  person.  A  good  governor  may  not  be  an  apt 
teacher  ;  and  the  happiest  of  instructors  may  not  be  a 
good  manager  of  men  or  of  affairs.  In  the  American 
college  system,  which  required  professors  both  to  teach 
and  to  govern,  it  often  happened  that  a  man  was  chosen 
to  teach,  not  so  much  because  he  was  a  good  teacher  as 
because  he  was  supposed  to  be  a  good  governor  ;  and  thus 
the  best  instruction  was  often  sacrificed  in  a  vain  attempt 
to  secure  good  government  under  a  defective  system. 

Assuming  the  defectiveness  of  the  existing  system  to 
have  been  proved,  Professor  Barnard  next  inquired 
whether  there  was  any  remedy  for  its  defects.  He  in- 
sisted that  there  was.  It  would  be  one  remedy,  if  only 
it  were  practicable,  to  return  to  the  old  university  system 
of  England  by  completely  separating  the  teaching  func- 
tion from  that  of  discipline  ;  abolishing  the  dormitories, 
and  committing  the  government  of  students  to  the  masters 
and  tutors  of  halls  and  colleges,  while  one  and  the  same 
corps  of  professors  should  be  the  instructors  of  all.  For 
various  reasons  he  did  not  believe  that  this  course  would 
be  practicable,  and  he  asked,  Is  there  no  other  remedy  ? 


166  MEMOIRS  OF 

There  is  one  [he  answered]  to  which,  little  favor  as  it  may 
find  at  present,  especially  with  colleges  which  have  invested 
large  sums  of  money  in  costly  buildings,  I  sincerely  believe 
that  the  whole  country  will  come  at  last.  It  is  to  abandon  the 
whole  cloister  system  entirely,  and  with  it  the  attempt  to  do 
what  is  now  done  only  in  pretence;  that  is,  the  attempt  to 
watch  over  the  conduct  and  protect  the  morals  of  the  student. 
I  am  aware  that  this  is  high  ground  to  take.  Deeply  satisfied 
as  I  have  been,  from  the  day  I  became  a  freshman  in  college 
to  the  present  hour,  of  the  vast  evil  and  the  little  good  inhe- 
rent in  the  present  system  of  government  in  American  colleges, 
I  should  not  perhaps  even  yet  have  felt  emboldened  to  speak 
out  my  convictions  so  publicly,  had  not  one  of  the  most  emi- 
nent of  our  American  educators  long  since  condemned  the  sys- 
tem as  publicly  and  decidedly  as  I,  and  upon  precisely  the 
same  grounds.  But  Dr.  Wayland  hesitates  to  pronounce  the 
existing  evils  sufficient  to  justify  the  abandonment  of  buildings 
already  erected.  He  confines  himself  to  deprecating  the  erec- 
tion of  any  more.  I  am  disposed  to  take  one  step  further.  I 
say  that  Dr.  Wayland  has  proved  the  system  to  be  so  perni- 
cious as  to  require  that  the  axe  should  be  laid  at  the  root  of 
it,  no  matter  what  the  cost  may  be. 

After  showing  how  the  dormitory  system  might  be 
abolished  at  once  in  the  University  of  Alabama  by  oc- 
cupying the  old  State  House  which  already  belonged  to 
it,  and  allowing  the  students  to  find  lodgings  in  the 
homes  of  citizens  of  Tuskaloosa,  he  acknowledged  that 
the  buildings  which  had  hitherto  been  occupied  would 
ultimately  be  abandoned.  He  insisted  that  the  abandon- 
ment would  be  no  real  loss,  since  the  State  House  would 
afford  far  better  accommodations  for  all  purposes  of  in- 
struction than  the  buildings  then  in  use,  and  the  dormito- 
ries had  never  been  a  source  of  revenue  to  the  University. 

In  the  possession  of  the  State  House  lie  observed  that 
the  University  of  Alabama  had  a  great  advantage  over 
other  institutions  similarly  situated. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  167 

Many  others  [he  said]  situated  precisely  like  ourselves,  have 
no  such  advantage,  and  it  is  worth  while  to  inquire  how  they 
and  we  came  originally  to  be  in  such  a  situation.  A  large 
number  of  the  colleges  of  our  country  are  planted  in  retired 
portions  of  the  interior,  and  instead  of  being  placed  in  the 
midst  of  any  community,  even  that  of  a  small  village,  they  are 
situated  at  a  distance  of  perhaps  half  an  hour's  walk  from  such 
a  community.  The  common  design  in  all  this  has  clearly  been 
to  avoid  the  dangerous  temptations  which  beset  youth  wherever 
human  beings  are  gathered  in  society.  These  temptations  are 
greatest  in  large  towns ;  therefore  large  towns  are,  first  of  all, 
sedulously  avoided.  They  are  not  absent  even  from  small 
towns  and  villages ;  therefore  small  towns  and  villages  are,  in 
like  manner,  tabooed.  Since  neither  students  nor  professors 
can  live  entirely  apart  from  their  fellow-creatures,  the  neigh- 
borhood of  some  small  town  is  tolerated;  but  only  at  such 
convenient  distance  that  if  it  possess  any  dangerous  allure- 
ments, the  young  men  can  easily  discover  them,  and  then  enjoy 
them  with  that  satisfaction  which  comes  from  the  knowledge 
that  their  instructors  are  quietly  housed  a  mile  and  a  half  off ! 

He  contended  that  the  whole  policy  of  isolating  col- 
leges from  human  society  is  a  mistaken  policy,  since  the 
temptations  of  the  city,  though  different  in  character,  are 
no  more  corrupting  in  their  consequences  than  the  temp- 
tations of  the  country ;  and  he  proclaimed  his  conviction 
that  whatever  advantage  there  may  be  in  the  retirement 
of  a  country  place  is  dearly  purchased  by  an  educational 
institution  at  the  cost  of  sacrificing  the  conveniences,  the 
intellectual  stimulus,  the  opportunities  of  observation,  and 
the  many  other  advantages  which  students,  not  less  than 
other  men,  enjoy  in  great  cities.  For  these  reasons,  he 
said,  "It  is  my  well-settled  belief  that,  in  the  selection 
of  a  site  for  a  college,  the  most  populous  town  should  be 
preferred  to  any  location  in  the  country,  however  appar- 
ently tempting,  and  that  no  consideration  should  disturb 
this  preference  except  that  of  healthfulness  only." 


168  MEMOIRS   OF 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  system  of  college  study  —  The  University  of  Virginia  and  its  elective 
plan  —  Defence  of  the  university  —  Objections  to  the  Virginia  system 
—  The  "open  system"  condemned  —  The  significance  of  degrees  — 
The  object  of  college  education  to  train  the  mind  —  Objection  to  its 
unpractical  character  considered  —  The  overloading  of  the  college 
course  in  compliance  with  popular  demands  —  An  elective  group  of 
studies  proposed  —  Barnard's  election  to  the  chair  of  Mathematics 
and  Natural  Philosophy  at  the  University  of  Oxford,  Mississippi  — 
His  ordination  and  removal  to  Oxford. 

PROFESSOR  BARNARD'S  "Report  on  a  Proposition  to 
Modify  the  Plan  of  Instruction  in  the  University  of  Ala- 
bama" was  written  under  considerable  disadvantages, 
and  bears  unmistakable  evidences  of  the  haste  with  which 
it  was  prepared.  Its  arrangement  of  topics  is  faulty;  it 
is  marked  throughout  by  extreme  diffuseness  of  style  ;  it 
does  not  in  the  least  suggest  the  complete  scheme  of  col- 
legiate, technical,  and  professional  schools  which  might  be 
included  in  a  thoroughly  equipped  university.  Yet  all 
the  elements  of  argument  which  might,  and  eventually 
did,  lead  up  to  that  larger  idea  were  present  to  his  mind 
in  the  writing  of  this  report.  It  is  possible,  indeed,  that 
he  may  have  purposely  abstained  from  the  suggestion  of 
a  scheme  for  which  he  did  not  consider  the  time  to  be  yet 
sufficiently  ripe,  and  that  he  may  have  deliberately  chosen 
to  confine  himself  for  the  present  to  a  defence  of  the  col- 
lege as  one  indispensable  branch  of  the  grander  institution 
which  might  in  time  be  developed ;  but  if  it  was  so,  his 
design  is  nowhere  betrayed  in  the  document  itself.  Cer- 
tain it  is  that  no  one  could  read  this  report  without  being 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  169 

led  to  entertain  many  reflections  beyond  those  which  it 
presented,  and  that  its  publication  brought  Professor 
Barnard  prominently  forward  not  only  as  an  able  defender 
of  the  old  college  curriculum,  but  also,  and  much  more, 
as  a  progressive  student  of  the  whole  subject  of  education. 
The  occasion  of  the  report  was  the  presentation  to  the 
Faculty  of  the  following  action  of  the  Board  of  Trustees : 

The  President  of  the  Board  and  the  Trustees  now  present 
are  unanimously  in  favor  of  modifying  the  present  system  of 
instruction  in  the  University  of  Alabama,  and  respectfully 
request  the  Faculty  of  the  University  to  report  to  an  adjourned 
meeting  of  the  Board,  on  Monday,  the  25th  of  September  next, 
the  plan  and  details  for  the  initiation  and  continuance  of  a 
system  conforming,  as  near  as  our  circumstances  will  allow,  to 
the  arrangements  of  the  University  of  Virginia. 

JOHN  A.  WINSTON. 

WM.  H.  FORNEY. 

JOHN  N.  MALONE. 

ED.  BAPTIST. 

H.  W.  COLLIER. 
UNIVERSITY  OF  ALABAMA,  JULY  12,  1854. 

In  this  request  of  the  Trustees  to  the  Faculty  there  was 
a  practical  culmination  of  the  agitation  which  had  been 
promoted  by  Governor  Collier.  In  its  original  motive 
it  was  not  unreasonable.  It  represented  a  demand  which 
grew  naturally  out  of  the  condition  of  things  existing  in 
the  State.  In  all  new  countries  education  will  be  valued 
for  its  immediate  practical  utility,  rather  than  for  its  more 
remote  advantages.  Not  to  speak  of  the  more  elementary 
branches  of  education,  chemistry  and  applied  mathematics 
will  be  appreciated,  while  astronomy  and  pure  mathe- 
matics will  be  slightly  valued;  and  the  study  of  "  dead 
languages  "  will  be  considered  useless,  while  instruction 
in  some  modern  language  may  be  eagerly  sought.  In  all 


170  MEMOIRS   OF 

communities,  old  and  new,  the  number  of  persons  who  can 
expect  to  pass  through  a  complete  college  curriculum  is 
small  in  comparison  with  the  number  for  whom  some- 
thing more  than  the  elementary  education  of  the  common 
school  is  desirable;  and  in  Alabama,  where  schools  of 
intermediate  grade  between  the  common  schools  and  the 
college  were  few  and  ill  equipped,  it  was  neither  un- 
natural nor  unreasonable  that  the  public  should  demand 
such  an  adjustment  of  the  college  regulations  as  to  make 
some  part  of  its  curriculum  available  for  the  instruction 
of  the  many  for  whom  no  other  provision  had  been  made. 
It  was  thought  that  this  end  might  be  reached  without 
detriment  to  the  special  work  of  the  college,  if  students 
who  did  not  desire  to  pass  through  the  whole  curriculum 
were  permitted  to  take  such  classes  as  might  be  helpful 
in  preparing  them  for  the  business  or  profession  to  which 
they  intended  to  devote  their  lives.  It  was  generally 
supposed  that  the  University  of  Virginia  permitted  and 
encouraged  such  a  use  of  its  classes,  and  hence  there 
arose  a  demand  that  the  University  of  Alabama  should 
model  its  arrangements  on  the  pattern  of  that  institution. 
If  the  demand  had  been  limited  to  this  extent,  there 
might  have  been  much  to  say  in  its  favor,  especially  in 
a  new  State  which  had  not  yet  organized  a  satisfactorily 
complete  system  of  public  education.  But  the  popular 
understanding  of  the  proposal  included  a  far  more  sweep- 
ing change,  nothing  less,  in  fact,  than  "  that  the  University 
should  give  instruction  to  all  who  chose  to  demand  it,  and 
should  give  them  whatever  instruction  they  chose  to  de- 
mand, so  that  the  students  should  study  what  they  chose, 
all  that  they  chose,  and  nothing  but  what  they  chose." 
The  function  of  the  Faculty  would  then  be  simply  to 
learn  what  students  for  the  time  being  wished,  and, 
from  time  to  time,  to  modify  all  the  arrangements  of  the 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  171 

college  in  accordance  with  the  wishes  or  requirements 
of  their  pupils.  Under  such  a  system,  which  was  em- 
phatically not  the  system  of  the  University  of  Virginia, 
the  college  curriculum  would  be  practically  abolished,  an 
educational  chaos  would  be  brought  into  existence,  and  a 
small  number  of  instructors  would  be  required  to  meet  a 
varied  and  capricious  demand  for  the  instruction  of  an 
indefinite  number  of  classes. 

The  agitation  in  favor  of  this  revolution  had  been 
animated,  and  even  acrimonious.  The  scheme  was  well 
adapted  to  enlist  popular  support.  The  leaders  of  the 
movement  were  practical  politicians,  and  the  arts  of  the 
politician  were  plied  in  promoting  their  designs.  Two 
members  of  the  Faculty,  —  Barnard  and  Stafford,  —  who 
had  been  zealous  in  opposing  the  proposed  measure,  were 
held  up  to  odium,  the  one  as  an  imported  Yankee  and  the 
other  as  a  supercilious  and  impracticable  South  Carolinian. 
The  large  number  of  students  at  Charlottesville  under 
the  [supposed]  Virginia  system  was  invidiously  con- 
trasted with  the  comparatively  small  number  at  Tuska- 
loosa,  and  it  was  triumphantly  asserted  that  an  adoption 
of  the  measure  advocated  by  the  agitators  would  have  the 
instant  effect  of  crowding  the  University  of  Alabama 
with  students  whom  the  present  system  excluded.  To 
the  personal  attack  Barnard  made  the  personal  reply 
which  has  been  mentioned  in  the  previous  chapter.  To 
the  proposed  scheme,  as  formulated  in  general  terms 
by  the  Board  of  Trustees,  he  set  forth  his  objections  in 
the  report  before  us. 

The  communication  from  the  Board  was  referred  to 
a  committee  of  the  Faculty  consisting  of  Professors 
Barnard,  Pratt,  and  Benagh.  In  the  report  upon  it 
which  was  drawn  up  by  Professor  Barnard,  Professor 
Pratt  concurred;  Professor  Benagh,  the  son-in-law  of 


172  MEMOIRS  OF 

Governor  Collier,  dissented.  Accordingly,  two  reports 
were  laid  before  the  Faculty.  The  report  of  the  majority 
was  ordered  by  the  Faculty  to  be  communicated  to  the 
Board  of  Trustees,  and  thus  became,  in  effect,  the  reply 
of  the  Faculty  to  the  communication  of  the  Trustees. 

At  the  very  outset,  Barnard  had  adroitly  chosen  to 
assume  that  the  request  of  the  Trustees,  positive  as  its 
language  appeared  to  be,  could  not  have  been  intended 
as  an  order  from  the  Trustees  to  the  Faculty,  but  must 
rather  be  regarded  as  the  expression  of  an  opinion, 
founded  on  prima  facie  evidence,  and  submitted  to  the 
Faculty  for  its  consideration.  He  took  it  for  granted 
that  the  Trustees  must  desire  to  hear  whatever  further 
evidence  or  argument  the  Faculty  might  have  to  lay 
before  them,  and  that  they  would  feel  themselves  bound 
to  reconsider  the  whole  subject,  as  thus  more  fully  pre- 
sented, in  a  judicially  impartial  spirit.  He  admitted  that 
if  general  dissatisfaction  with  the  methods  of  the  Uni- 
versity existed,  those  methods  must  be  changed.  He  did 
not  deny  that  some  changes  might  be  necessary.  The 
members  of  the  Faculty  themselves  had  long  felt  that 
one  change  was  necessary;  not,  however,  in  the  pro- 
posed direction,  but  because,  in  their  desire  to  comply 
with  all  possible  demands,  the  curriculum  of  the  Uni- 
versity had  been  extended  until,  in  common  with  the 
faculties  of  other  colleges,  they  had  found  themselves 
face  to  face  with  two  evils,  the  overtasking  of  the 
students  on  the  one  hand,  and  superficial  teaching  on 
the  other.  But  they  were  not  prepared  to  recommend, 
and  they  did  not  believe  that  the  community  in  general 
desired,  a  complete  subversion  of  the  whole  system  pur- 
sued at  the  University,  or  the  substitution,  instead  of  it,  of 
so  loose  a  system  as  had  lately  been  proposed.  If  there 
was  any  such  general  desire,  the  members  of  the  Faculty, 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  173 

in  mingling  with  their  fellow-citizens,  had  not  encountered 
it.  They  had  not  had  it  mentioned  to  them  in  a  some- 
what extensive  correspondence  with  representative  men 
of  the  State.  If  the  sentiment  of  the  people  might  be 
inferred  from  the  comments  of  the  press,  then  the  general 
sentiment  must  be  entirely  one  of  satisfaction,  since  not 
one  journal  in  the  State  had  expressed  any  other  sentiment 
on  this  subject  during  the  past  twelve  months.  In  short, 
while  they  had  heard  complaints  of  various  kinds  from 
time  to  time,  and  particularly  of  the  overloading  of  the 
college  course,  which  they  themselves  felt  to  be  an  evil, 
they  had  never  received  from  any  source  the  slightest 
suggestion  of  the  propriety  of  any  sweeping  change,  nor, 
certainly,  of  the  adoption  of  the  supposed  system  of  the 
University  of  Virginia,  until  the  subject  had  been  referred 
to  them  in  the  communication  of  the  Board  of  Trustees. 
They  were,  therefore,  constrained  to  believe  that  no 
general  demand  existed  for  the  change  which  was  now 
proposed. 

Replying  to  the  argument  that  the  public  must  be 
dissatisfied  with  the  system  of  the  University  since  the 
number  of  students  committed  to  its  training  was  com- 
paratively small,  it  was  said  that  in  the  circumstances 
of  the  State  and  the  University,  the  number  could  not 
reasonably  be  expected  to  be  large.  The  State  was  new. 
Its  citizens  were  engaged  in  subduing  nature  to  the  use 
of  man,  and  the  higher  education  did  not  yet  engage 
their  interest  or  attention  as  it  would  after  a  generation 
or  two  should  have  passed  away.  The  more  enlightened 
citizens,  who  had  themselves  enjoyed  superior  educational 
advantages,  had  old  associations  with  institutions  in 
other  States.  They  were  therefore  naturally  inclined 
to  send  their  sons  to  those  institutions  in  preference 
to  the  University  of  their  own  State,  while  no  such 


174  MEMOIRS  OF 

influences  could  yet  be  expected  to  draw  students  from 
other  States.  Besides,  there  had  sprung  up  in  different 
parts  of  the  State  a  number  of  denominational  colleges 
which  claimed  and  received  the  support  of  different 
religious  bodies  on  religious  grounds,  thus  withdrawing 
from  the  non-sectarian  University  of  the  State  many 
youths  who  would  otherwise  have  been  enrolled  among 
its  alumni.  On  the  other  hand,  while  the  University, 
as  a  recent  institution,  had  its  traditional  attachments 
yet  to  create,  while  it  could  not  yet  hope  to  attract  stu- 
dents from  beyond  the  State,  and  while  it  was  crippled 
by  the  rivalry  of  sectarian  institutions,  it  had  deliberately 
and  advisedly  adopted  a  standard  of  scholarship  which 
repelled  many  who  might  have  been  attracted  to  it  by 
easier  conditions  of  entrance  and  graduation.  The 
Faculty  had  been  charged  with  greater  severity  in  this 
respect  than  was  practised  in  any  other  college  in  the 
Southwestern  States;  but  however  that  might  be,  they 
had  secured  to  their  own  institution  at  least  the  respect 
of  the  community  and  of  other  institutions  of  learning 
throughout  the  country.  That  their  policy  had  cost 
them  much  in  the  matter  of  numbers  was  undoubtedly 
true ;  but  they  had  not  felt  that  larger  numbers  could 
be  wisely  gained  at  the  cost  of  lowering  their  standard 
of  sound  scholarship. 

Notwithstanding  all  these  drawbacks,  if  the  Trustees 
would  remember  that  so  new  an  institution  must  expect 
to  draw  its  students  almost  exclusively  from  within 
the  limits  of  the  State,  and  if  they  would  compare  it 
fairly  in  point  of  numbers  with  other  State  institutions 
of  learning,  they  would  find  the  comparison  to  be  reas- 
suring. Virginia,  for  example,  with  a  population  of 
894,800  in  1850,  had  sent  only  163  of  her  own  sons  to  the 
Department  of  Arts  in  the  University  at  Charlottesville, 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  175 

while  Alabama,  with  a  population  of  426,514,  had  sent 
98  youths  from  within  her  borders  to  the  University 
at  Tuskaloosa.  Thus,  in  proportion  to  population,  the 
University  of  Alabama  equalled  the  University  of  Vir- 
ginia in  the  number  of  its  native  students,  and  had 
21  to  spare ;  or,  in  other  words,  the  University  of 
Virginia  lacked  46  of  being  equal  to  the  University 
of  Alabama  in  that  respect !  Still  further,  if  compared 
with  the  general  average  of  colleges  throughout  the 
country,  the  University  of  Alabama,  young  as  it  was, 
held  a  fairly  high  rank  even  in  point  of  numbers.  Of 
121  colleges  reported  in  the  American  Almanac  for 
1850,  78  had  a  smaller  number  of  students,  and  only 
38  had  more  ;  and  in  a  document  presented  to  the 
Board  of  Education  in  the  City  of  New  York,  1851, 
it  appeared  that  of  53  colleges,  including  the  oldest 
and  best  endowed  institutions  of  the  country,  only 
26  had  more,  while  26  had  fewer  students  than  the 
University  of  Alabama.  Having  thus  disposed  of  the 
allegation  that  the  disapprobation  of  the  community 
had  been  silently  but  practically  expressed  by  with- 
holding their  sons  from  the  University,  the  Report  con- 
tended that  "numbers  alone  constitute,  in  general,  the 
most  trifling  and  shadowy  and  insignificant  evidence 
of  excellence  in  a  school  that  can  be  adduced " ;  and 
that  "if  a  seminary  is  young,  and  is  situated  in  a  new 
country,  and  only  nominally  exacts  some  slight  intel- 
lectual training  as  a  condition  of  membership,  great 
numbers,  suddenly  collected,  will  furnish  an  ominous 
indication  of  the  fidelity  of  its  administration." 

The  Report  next  proceeded  to  show  that  two  entirely 
different  schemes  were  proposed  under  the  demand  for 
an  adoption  of  the  system  of  the  University  of  Virginia. 
Not  one  in  twenty  of  the  people  understood  what  that 


176  MEMOIRS   OF 

system  really  was.  Some  supposed  it  to  mean  nothing 
more  than  the  admission  of  students  to  particular  classes 
or  courses  in  the  college  curriculum,  without  subjecting 
them  to  the  necessity  of  pursuing  the  entire  curriculum  ; 
others,  while  they  did  not  object  to  that  curriculum  for 
students  who  desired  it,  supposed  that  under  the  Vir- 
ginia system  all  students  would  have  an  equal  right  to 
select,  and  that  the  Faculty  would  be  bound  to  provide, 
any  curriculum  of  studies  they  might  think  proper  to 
devise.  On  the  former  understanding,  the  Virginia 
system  would  seriously  embarrass  the  existing  college 
arrangements  and  would  not  be  practically  satisfactory 
to  those  who  asked  it ;  on  the  latter,  it  would  be  abso- 
lutely impracticable  with  the  means  at  the  disposal  of 
the  Faculty. 

If  students  were  to  be  admitted  to  single  classes  or 
courses,  the  disadvantage  to  the  college  would  lie  chiefly 
in  the  aggravation  of  one  of  its  greatest  difficulties, 
which  was  the  insufficient  preparation  of  students  at 
their  entry.  It  was  not  only  that  nearly  all  students 
in  American  colleges  are  inadequately  prepared  for  the 
particular  studies  they  are  to  pursue,  but  that  their  previ- 
ous mental  training  has  usually  been  either  superficial  or 
positively  vicious.  In  students  entering  for  particular 
classes  this  difficulty  would  be  exaggerated,  since  they 
would  not  generally  have  had  the  benefit  even  of  such 
mental  training  as  is  enjoyed  by  those  who  have  made 
any  serious  preparation  for  the  regular  college  course. 
Hence  such  students  would  find  themselves  heavily 
handicapped  in  the  classes  or  courses  they  might  choose 
to  enter;  their  incapacity  would  retard  the  progress 
of  the  classes  ;  and  they  would  be  hindered,  rather  than 
helped,  in  their  special  studies  by  the  necessity  of  con- 
forming to  the  class  arrangements  of  the  University. 


FREDERICK  A,   P.   BARNARD  177 

They  would  be  compelled,  willingly  or  unwillingly,  to 
a  routine  which  had  not  been  prescribed  with  a  view 
to  their  peculiar  requirements,  and  those  who  desired  to 
pursue  only  one  or  two  branches  of  study  would  be 
obliged,  so  far  as  the  system  of  the  University  went, 
to  waste  one -half  or  two-thirds  of  their  time  for  the 
sake  of  such  instruction  as  they  might  receive  in  those 
branches.  An  experiment  in  this  direction  had  already 
been  made  by  the  University  in  1831  by  the  provision 
of  what  was  called  a  partial  course  system.  If  the 
statute,  as  it  was  printed  by  the  Board  in  1837,  were 
revived,  it  would  require  very  slight  modification  to 
make  it  conform  precisely  to  the  plan  of  the  University 
of  Virginia.  Its  language  was  as  follows :  "  The  Uni- 
versity shall  be  open  to  persons  who  do  not  desire  to 
take  the  full  course  and  to  be  graduated  as  Bachelors 
of  Arts,  but  who  desire  to  take  a  partial  course  and  be 
graduated  in  particular  departments  only ;  provided  they 
are  found  qualified  for  the  studies  of  that  department 
which  they  wish  to  join;  and  provided  they  take  not 
less  than  the  usual  number  of  departments."  This  ex- 
periment had  not  been  crowned  with  success.  It  dif- 
fered hardly  at  all  from  the  plan  of  the  University  of 
Virginia,  except  in  withholding  the  degrees  of  Bachelor 
and  Master  of  Arts  from  students  of  the  voluntary 
courses  ;  but  its  effect  had  been  immediately  and  disas- 
trously apparent.  The  preparation  of  the  partial  course 
students  for  their  several  departments  was  meagre;  the 
general  standard  of  attainment  was  lowered;  habits  of 
idleness  and  vice  were  formed,  and  at  length  a  spirit 
of  uncontrollable  insubordination  appeared  among  the 
students.  The  disasters  which  befell  the  institution  in 
those  earlier  years  had  been  attributable  in  part  to  the 
mismanagement  of  its  officers,  but  there  could  be  no 

N 


178  MEMOIRS   OF 

doubt  that  they  were  also  and  largely  due  to  the  system 
which  the  officers  had  been  required  to  carry  out.  If  the 
same  system  were  now  to  be  revived  and  extended  by 
the  opening  of  single  classes  as  well  as  departments  to 
partial  course  students,  a  repetition  of  the  same  disorder 
might  safely  be  predicted. 

Much  more  might  confusion  be  anticipated  if  every 
student  were  to  be  allowed  to  study  "what  he  chose, 
all  that  he  chose,  and  nothing  that  he  did  not  choose." 
The  sure  result  of  such  a  system  would  be  the  annihila- 
tion of  all  system,  and  with  it  of  all  genuine  study.  A 
single  institution  like  the  college  could  not  fulfil  its  own 
peculiar  functions  and  at  the  same  time  provide  profes- 
sional, scientific,  and  technical  instruction.  The  Faculty 
did  not  deny  that  such  instruction  might  be  needed. 
They  were  by  no  means  opposed  to  the  establishment 
of  institutions  for  imparting  it.  If  such  institutions 
were  required,  by  all  means  let  them  be  created.  If 
the  demand  for  the  instruction  which  such  institutions 
could  alone  supply  was  really  general  and  sincere,  the 
means  for  establishing  and  maintaining  them  would 
surely  be  forthcoming ;  private  enterprise  would  not 
fail  to  provide  them;  "  for  schools,  to  which  hundreds 
are  waiting  to  resort  so  soon  as  their  doors  shall  be 
opened,  can  never  fail  to  be  eminently  lucrative,  merely 
as  pecuniary  investments.  If,  then,  the  demand  be  real, 
there  exists  not  the  slightest  necessity  for  the  University 
to  supply  it."  The  Faculty  maintained  that  it  was  not 
possible,  even  in  a  physical  sense,  for  the  University  to 
supply  it,  unless  there  should  be  an  increase  of  the  teach- 
ing staff  commensurate  with  the  proposed  increase  of 
labor  ;  but  they  observed  that  with  the  same  expense 
which  would  be  involved  in  so  great  an  increase  of  the 
number  of  teachers,  it  would  be  possible  to  organize  pro- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  179 

fessional  and  technical  schools,  and  so  to  supply  all  that 
was  desired,  without  disorganizing  the  college. 

It  was  often  said  that  German  universities  offered 
opportunities  of  instruction  in  all  departments  of  knowl- 
edge, and  that  was  true.  But  German  universities  were 
very  expensive  establishments,  with  large  corps  of  pro- 
fessors ;  and,  in  a  country  where  scholars  are  numbered 
by  tens  of  thousands,  professors  had  sometimes  classes 
of  two  or  three  students,  and  sometimes  no  classes  at  all. 
The  German  universities  did  not  correspond  with  the 
American  colleges  ;  they  were  professional  schools.  In 
Halle,  for  example,  out  of  eleven  hundred  students,  all 
but  sixty  were  engaged  in  the  study  of  theology,  law, 
and  medicine.  The  German  institution  which  really 
corresponded  with  the  American  college  was  the  Gymna- 
sium, in  which  the  classical,  mathematical,  and  scientific 
course  is  often  fuller,  and  is  in  some  respects  more 
thorough,  than  the  course  pursued  in  American  colleges. 

No  argument,  therefore  [said  the  Eeport],  can  be  drawn 
from  the  educational  institutions  of  Germany  to  ours,  or,  if 
such  a  one  should  be  attempted,  it  ought  to  be  for  the  creation 
of  a  new  and  higher  description  of  schools,  to  which  none  but 
those  who  have  completed  the  usual  course  of  college  study 
should  be  admitted,  rather  than  for  the  conversion  of  our 
existing  colleges  into  what  in  Germany  would  be  mere  non- 
descripts, having  the  form  of  the  University  and  the  grade  of 
the  Gymnasium. 

In  the  opinion  of  the  Faculty,  the  demand  for  an 
"open"  system  of  instruction  in  colleges  did  not  "pro- 
ceed from  a  genuine  desire  for  special  or  partial  instruc- 
tion, but  simply  and  solely  from  the  ambition  to  obtain 
the  college  stamp  of  scholarship,  without  submitting  to 
that  severe  and  systematic  intellectual  training  which 


180  MEMOIKS   OF 

alone  can  make  the  scholar."  Moreover,  they  believed 
it  to  have  been  practically  proved  that  "in  the  mass  of 
the  community  there  is,  after  all,  too  much  good  sense, 
and  too  true  a  discrimination  between  pretence  and  real- 
ity, to  accept  the  dispensation  when  it  is  offered."  Thus, 
the  University  of  Virginia  itself,  prosperous  as  it  seemed 
on  a  first  glance  at  its  catalogue,  enjoyed  a  very  moder- 
ate prosperity  in  its  Department  of  Arts.  If  it  were  as 
highly  esteemed  by  the  citizens  of  Virginia  as  the  Col- 
lege of  South  Carolina  (under  the  regular  system)  was 
esteemed  by  the  citizens  of  that  State,  the  number  of 
young  Virginians  studying  under  the  Faculty  of  Arts 
would  be  632,  and  not  163,  as  it  now  was.  Two  other 
institutions  in  Virginia  had  made  the  attempt  to  rival 
or  surpass  the  State  institution  in  the  attraction  of 
"open"  courses.  In  making  that  attempt,  Washington 
College,  possessing,  as  it  did,  an  ample  endowment,  had 
no  object  but  to  increase  the  number  of  its  students,  and 
so  to  render  itself  more  useful  to  the  citizens  of  the 
State.  It  endeavored,  in  all  good  faith,  to  accommodate 
its  instructions  to  the  various  demands  of  learners,  freely 
permitting  each  of  them  "to  study  what  he  chose,  all 
that  he  chose,  and  nothing  that  he  did  not  choose." 
The  result,  as  told  by  Dr.  Manly,  was  instructive.  The 
College 

soon  found  that,  on  the  new  plan,  its  accustomed  work  had 
swelled  into  an  intolerable  burden.  With  the  same  number 
of  officers  as  before,  and  with  no  great  increase  of  students,  the 
voluntary  plan  had  so  multiplied  sections  and  subdivisions  of 
students  as  to  impose  on  some  of  the  officers  the  necessity 
of  hearing  recitations  incessantly,  from  morning  till  night. 
These  small  squads,  having  no  definite  amount  of  labor  to  per- 
form in  a  given  time,  and  wanting  the  stimulus  of  numbers,  — 
a  serious  want,  —  dragged  heavily  through  their  work. 


FREDERICK   A.    P.   BARNARD  181 

After  a  trial  of  three  or  four  years,  the  experiment  was 
abandoned,  and  everything  "was  restored  to  its  original 
organization."  In  a  similar  experiment,  Randolph  Macon 
College  had  had  no  better  fortune.  The  plan  had  a  pop- 
ular aspect ;  the  officers,  who  were  men  of  experience, 
entered  on  its  administration  with  an  honest  purpose  and 
with  the  zeal  belonging  to  a  new  denominational  enter- 
prise ;  but  before  the  end  of  two  years,  their  affairs  had 
run  into  great  confusion.  The  influence  of  degrees  in 
attracting  students  to  colleges  permitting  "  open  "  courses 
had  been  shown  by  other  significant  experiments.  In  the 
University  of  Georgia,  where  the  "  open  "  course  was  per- 
mitted, but  no  degree  was  conferred  on  a  student  who 
adopted  it,  the  average  number  of  students  who  availed 
themselves  of  the  privilege  was  only  four  or  five  out  of  a 
total  number  of  about  140.  In  the  University  of  Roches- 
ter, in  1853-4,  under  a  similar  arrangement,  and  with  a 
similar  restriction  as  to  degrees,  there  were  only  eleven 
out  of  a  total  of  118,  and  of  the  eleven  only  four  advanced 
beyond  a  single  year.  In  Union  College,  however,  where 
substantially  the  same  system  existed  as  at  Rochester, 
with  the  sole  exception  that  it  provided  for  the  granting 
of  degrees  to  open-course  students,  there  were  57  students 
of  that  class  out  of  a  total  number  of  241  undergraduates. 

If,  the  Report  continued,  the  frequent  demand  for  special 
or  optional  courses  of  study  were  sincere,  it  would  exhibit 
itself  in  an  effort  to  provide  institutions  of  the  kind  pro- 
fessedly desired,  and  not  in  an  effort  to  procure  a  modifi- 
cation of  the  college  system.  What  was  really  desired 
was  to  obtain  from  colleges  and  universities  the  honor  of 
degrees  which  those  institutions  were  alone  empowered 
to  confer,  and  to  obtain  them  on  easy  terms.  For  that 
reason  the  Faculty  felt  bound  to  resist  an  encroachment 
which  would  tend  only  to  the  degradation  of  colleges  by 


182  MEMOIRS   OF 

cheapening  their  degrees  so  as  to  make  them  worthless. 
The  granting  of  degrees  is  the  peculiar  function  of  a 
university.  In  the  discharge  of  that  function  it  does  all 
that  is  indispensable  to  its  office.  The  University  of 
London,  for  example,  employed  salaried  examiners,  who 
had  no  other  duty  than  that  of  examining  candidates 
for  degrees,  and  at  the  present  time  the  University  did 
nothing  else  than  grant  degrees  on  the  report  of  its 
examiners. 

The  early  history  of  all  the  old  universities  of  England  and 
of  the  Continent  of  Europe  shows  that,  while  they  certainly 
furnished  instruction,  and  their  instructors  were  exceedingly 
numerous,  the  only  recognized  point  of  contact  between  the 
university,  as  a  body,  and  the  individual  student  was  that  in 
which  the  latter  presented  himself  as  a  candidate  for  gradua- 
tion. The  value  of  the  degree  conferred  consisted,  of  course, 
as  it  does  still,  in  the  fact  that  it  stamped  the  graduate  as  a 
scholar — a  man  well  versed  in  what  were  called  the  Liberal 
Arts,  and  in  Philosophy.  Where  or  how  he  might  have 
attained  the  mastery  of  these  subjects,  mattered  not;  if  the 
candidate,  on  the  application  of  certain  severe  tests  of  his 
scholarship  and  knowledge,  was  found  to  be  worthy  of  the 
degree,  it  was  awarded  to  him  as  a  matter  of  right.  These 
tests  were  examinations,  extended  and  thorough,  oral  and 
written. 

In  the  older  universities  it  used  to  be  held  that  education 
is  not  complete  until  the  student  has  been  disciplined  not  only 
in  receiving  but  imparting  knowledge.  Every  Bachelor  of 
Arts  was  required  to  teach  certain  books  or  subjects  in  order 
that  he  might  become  a  Master ;  and,  as  Sir  William  Hamilton 
has  said,  "  every  Master  or  Doctor  was  compelled  by  statute, 
and  frequently  on  oath,  to  teach  for  a  certain  period,  which 
was  commonly  two  years,  immediately  subsequent  to  gradua- 
tion." In  consequence  of  this  requirement,  the  necessary  in- 
struction preparatory  to  an  application  for  graduation,  though 
it  might  be  acquired  in  any  school  whatever,  was  usually 
obtained  with  most  convenience  in  the  University  towns, 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  183 

where  colleges  were  endowed  for  the  support  and  residence 
of  poor  students,  while  boarding-houses,  called  halls,  were 
established  for  those  who  were  able  to  pay  for  their  mainte- 
nance. Each  of  these  colleges  and  halls  was  subject  to  the 
government  of  a  resident  Master,  assisted  by  one  or  more 
tutors.  At  first  the  proper  business  of  the  tutors  was  mainly 
to  look  after  the  conduct  of  the  pupils ;  but  in  the  progress  of 
time  they  have  become  almost  exclusively  the  teachers  of  the 
undergraduates  in  all  the  studies  required  to  fit  them  for  the 
University  examinations. 

Since  graduation  in  the  English  universities  depends  strictly 
upon  the  results  of  examination,  and  not  upon  a  prescribed 
routine  of  daily  studies,  it  might  appear  that  the  student 
should  be  subject  to  no  control  in  regard  to  the  order  in  which 
he  may  pursue  his  studies.  But  it  is  a  manifest  necessity  that 
there  should  be  some  established  standard  by  which  the  at- 
tainments of  candidates  for  degrees  may  be  tested;  and  such 
a  standard  can  be  intelligible  and  definite  only  when  presented 
in  the  form  of  a  prescribed  series  of  books  of  which  the  con- 
tents are  to  be  perfectly  mastered.  This  reduces  the  business 
of  University  instruction  to  the  inculcation,  for  purposes  of 
education,  of  the  substance  of  certain  special  treatises  of 
science  or  philosophy,  and  certain  particular  works  of  ancient 
and  modern  literature.  Thus  is  established  what  is  called  the 
college  curriculum  of  study. 

As  the  original  design  for  which  the  academic  honor  of 
graduation  was  instituted  was  to  distinguish  those  who  had 
submitted  to  a  thorough  course  of  intellectual  training,  the 
curriculum  of  study  embraced  matters  which  were  designed  to 
exercise  all  the  faculties  of  the  human  mind,  in  due  and 
symmetrical  proportion.  The  Seven  Liberal  Arts,  as  they 
were  called,  received  this  name  because  they  were  believed  to 
be  suitable  to  furnish  this  training.  They  were  distinguished 
from  the  arts  of  handicraft  —  the  Mechanic  Arts  —  on  the  one 
hand,  and  from  the  arts  of  embellishment  —  the  Fine  Arts  — 
on  the  other.  They  are  fitted  in  their  several  ways  to  induce 
those  intellectual  habits  without  which  nothing  valuable  can 
ever  be  accomplished  in  the  world  of  mind,  and  to  furnish  that 
exercise  which  is  as  necessary  to  the  development  of  mental  as 


184  MEMOIRS    OF 

of  physical  vigor.  The  pursuit  of  Mathematics  forms  habits 
of  close  and  concentrated  attention  and  develops  the  power  of 
following  out  a  continuous  and  extended  train  of  thought.  The 
study  of  Language  invigorates  the  memory,  imparts  a  facility 
in  delicate  discriminations,  multiplies  ideas,  improves  the 
power  of  expression,  and  gives  increased  command  of  the 
instrument  by  which  mind  mainly  influences  mind.  The  sys- 
tematic exercise  of  the  reason  is  brought  into  play  in  the 
study  of  Dialectics,  in  which  the  learner  is  taught  to  apply  the 
touch-stone  of  logic  to  argument,  to  distinguish  sound  reasoning 
from  sophistry,  to  arrange  the  materials  of  a  discussion  and 
to  present  truths  of  inference  in  the  most  impressive  form. 
Rhetoric  stimulates  the  invention  by  demanding  what  con- 
siderations may  be  alleged  in  support  of  specific  propositions ; 
it  disciplines  the  judgment  by  calling  upon  it  to  decide  nice 
questions  of  the  propriety  of  language;  it  cultivates  the 
imagination  by  exercising  it  in  the  embellishments  of  figura- 
tive expression;  and  it  trains  the  taste  to  control  the  exu- 
berance of  a  fancy  which  might  be  too  apt,  if  unrestrained, 
to  run  into  riotous  extravagance.  Natural  Philosophy,  in  its 
various  branches  furnishes  numerous  examples  of  reasoning 
from  induction,  or  inferring  truth  from  probable  evidence. 
Moral  Philosophy  is  a  continuous  and  improving  application  of 
the  principles  of  logic  to  questions  which  concern  the  conscience  ; 
and  its  cultivation  is  calculated  not  only  to  quicken  and 
improve  the  judgment  in  matters  of  abstract  truth,  but  also  to 
establish  principles  in  place  of  feeling  as  the  guide  of  action. 
The  Philosophy  of  Mind,  the  science  of  self-knowledge,  opens  up 
a  world  vast  as  that  of  matter  and  impalpable  as  the  thinking 
essence  itself.  "  Philosophy,"  says  Sir  William  Hamilton,  "  the 
thinking  of  thought,  the  recoil  of  mind  upon  itself,  is  one  of 
the  most  improving  of  mental  exercises,  conducing,  above  all 
others,  to  evolve  the  highest  and  rarest  of  the  intellectual 
powers.  By  this  the  mind  is  not  only  trained  to  philosophy 
proper,  but  prepared  in  general  for  powerful,  easy,  and  suc- 
cessful energy  in  whatever  department  of  knowledge  it  may 
more  peculiarly  apply  itself."  Thus,  every  study  throughout 
the  entire  range  of  the  liberal  arts  and  the  philosophies  has  its 
peculiar  use  and  value  in  drawing  into  activity  and  cherishing 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  185 

into  vigor  the  various  powers  and  faculties  of  the  human  mind. 
When  all  are  combined  in  due  proportion  in  a  system  of 
intellectual  training,  the  pupil  emerges  from  the  discipline 
with  a  mind  well  balanced,  and  fitted  to  grapple  with  what- 
ever difficulty.  Should  he  now  direct  his  energies,  as  men 
usually  do,  into  some  one  particular  channel,  a  one-sided 
development  will  not  make  him  a  giant  within  the  domain  of 
his  chosen  profession  and  a  pigmy  without.  In  his  special 
pursuit  he  may  attain  eminence  with  much  or  with  little  labor, 
but  it  will  not  be  at  the  expense  of  disqualifying  himself  for 
intelligent  intercourse  with  men  of  every  other  class.  Men 
possessed  of  these  advantages,  that  is,  men  of  thorough  educa- 
tion, will  always  be  comparatively  few.  The  majority  either 
can  not  or  will  not  submit  to  the  long,  steady,  and  even  pain- 
ful discipline  it  demands.  To  denounce  the  colleges  because 
they  can  only  educate  their  tens,  while  hundreds  can  not,  or 
will  not,  submit  to  their  intellectual  regimen,  is  clearly  unjust ; 
and  to  lower  the  conditions  on  which  their  degrees  are  granted, 
in  order  that  certificates  of  accomplished  scholarship  may  be 
conferred  on  persons  who  are  not  scholars,  must  certainly  im- 
pair the  usefulness  of  colleges  and  bring  academic  degrees  into 
contempt,  but  cannot  make  an  uneducated  graduate  worthy  of 
the  degree  he  wears. 

The  Report  replied  at  some  length  and  with  some  acer- 
bity to  the  frequently  reiterated  assertion  that  a  college 
education  does  not  furnish  a  fit  preparation  for  practical 
life,  since  the  knowledge  which  it  imparts  to  the  student 
is  not  practically  available  in  the  affairs  of  life.  The 
Faculty  contended  that  there  could  be  no  better  prepara- 
tion for  the  business  of  life  than  an  education  which  trains 
every  power  of  the  mind  for  the  uses  to  which  it  is  after- 
wards to  be  applied,  and  that  man  who  enjoys  the  com- 
plete use  of  every  intellectual  power  with  which  he  is 
endowed  must  have  an  immense  advantage  over  another 
man  whose  powers  have  not  been  trained  to  be  obedient 
to  his  command.  They  did  not  admit  that  the  knowledge 


186  MEMOIRS   OF 

acquired  in  an  academic  education,  even  if  considered 
only  as  knowledge,  is  of  no  value  in  practical  affairs. 
They  maintained  the  contrary  with  energy;  but  they 
insisted  that  the  object  of  such  an  education  is  not  the 
acquisition  of  knowledge  which  may  be  turned  to  account 
in  the  common  affairs  of  life,  but  rather  a  complete  train- 
ing and  exercise  of  the  powers  which  are  to  be  used 
through  life.  On  this  point  they  took  the  very  highest 
ground.  They  maintained  with  Sir  William  Hamilton 
that  when  man  is  considered  as  he  ought  to  be  con- 
sidered, that  is,  as  an  end  to  himself, 

knowledge  is  only  valuable  as  it  exercises,  develops,  and 
invigorates  the  mind;  so  that  a  university,  in  its  liberal 
faculty,  should  especially  prefer  those  objects  of  study  which 
call  forth  the  strongest  and  most  unexclusive  energy  of  thought, 
aud  so  teach  them,  too,  that  this  energy  shall  be  most  fully 
elicited  in  the  student.  For  speculative  knowledge,  of  whatever 
kind,  is  only  profitable  to  the  student  in  his  liberal  culti- 
vation, inasmuch  as  it  supplies  him  with  the  object  and  occa- 
sion of  exerting  his  faculties ;  since  powers  are  only  developed 
in  proportion  as  they  are  exercised,  that  is,  put  forth  into 
energy.  The  mere  possession  of  scientific  truths  is,  for  its 
own  sake,  valueless ;  and  education  is  only  education  inas- 
much as  it  at  once  determines  and  enables  the  student  to 
educate  himself. 

Hence  the  Faculty  concurred  in  the  conviction  of  President 
Thornwell  of  South  Carolina  that  in  laying  out  the  cur- 
riculum of  a  sound  college  course  "the  selection  of  studies 
must  be  made,  not  with  reference  to  the  comparative 
importance  of  their  matter  or  the  practical  value  of  the 
knowledge,  but  with  reference  to  their  influence  in  unfold- 
ing and  strengthening  the  powers  of  the  mind."  This 
conviction  they  agreed  with  Dr.  Thornwell  in  pushing 
to  its  extreme  conclusion  that 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  187 

the  introduction  of  studies  on  the  ground  of  their  practical 
utility  is,  pro  tanto,  subversive  of  the  college.  It  is  not  the 
office  of  the  college  to  make  planters,  mechanics,  lawyers, 
physicians,  or  divines.  It  has  nothing  directly  to  do  with  the 
uses  of  knowledge.  Its  business  is  with  minds,  and  it  employs 
science  only  as  an  instrument  for  the  improvement  and  per- 
fection of  mind.  With  it,  the  habit  of  sound  thinking  is  more 
than  a  thousand  thoughts.  When,  therefore,  the  question  is 
asked,  as  it  is  often  asked,  What  is  the  use  of  certain  parts  of 
the  college  curriculum  ?  the  answer  should  turn,  not  upon  the 
benefits  which,  in  after  life,  may  be  reaped  from  those  pur- 
suits, but  upon  their  immediate  subjective  influence  upon  the 
cultivation  of  the  human  faculties. 

On  these  grounds  they  agreed  with  Dr.  Thornwell's  judg- 
ment that  the  admission  of  "  partial-course  students  "  to 
college  classes  would  be  inconsistent  with  the  fundamen- 
tal aim  of  a  college. 

These  students,  he  said,  are  not  seeking  knowledge  for 
the  sake  of  discipline,  but  with  reference  to  ulterior  uses. 
They  come,  not  to  be  trained  to  think,  but  to  learn  to  act  in 
certain  definite  departments  of  exertion.  It  is  professional, 
not  liberal,  education  that  they  want.  The  want,  I  acknowl- 
edge, should  be  gratified;  it  is  a  demand  which  should  be 
supplied.  But  the  college  is  not  the  place  to  do  it.  That 
was  founded  for  other  purposes,  and  it  is  simply  preposterous 
to  abrogate  its  constitution  out  of  concession  to  a  necessity, 
because  the  necessity  happens  to  be  real.  What,  therefore, 
ought  to  be  done  is,  not  to  change  the  nature  of  the  college, 
but,  leaving  that  untouched  to  do  its  own  work,  to  organize 
schools  with  special  reference  to  this  class  of  wants. 

It  was  a  neglect  of  these  principles,  which  the  Faculty 
enforced  by  numerous  quotations  from  distinguished  edu- 
cators, that  had  led  to  an  incessant  overloading  of  the 
college  course.  It  had  been  almost  impossible  to  avoid 
the  innovation. 


188  MEMOIRS   OF 

With  the  present  century  [as  Dr.  Wayland  had  put  it],  a 
new  era  dawned  upon  the  world.  A  host  of  new  sciences 
arose,  all  holding  important  relations  to  the  progress  of  civili- 
zation. Here  was  a  whole  people  in  an  entirely  novel  posi- 
tion. Almost  the  whole  nation  was  able  to  read.  Mind  had 
been  quickened  to  intense  energy  by  the  events  of  the  Revolu- 
tion. The  spirit  of  self-reliance  had  gained  strength  by  the 
result  of  that  contest.  A  country  rich  in  every  form  of  capa- 
bility had  just  come  into  their  possession.  Its  wealth  was 
inexhaustible,  and  its  adaptation  to  the  production  of  most  of 
the  great  staples  of  commerce  was  unsurpassed.  All  that  was 
needed  to  develop  its  resources  was  well-directed  labor.  But 
labor  can  be  skilfully  directed  only  by  science;  and  the 
sciences  now  coming  into  notice  were  precisely  those  which  the 
condition  of  the  country  rendered  indispensable  to  success. 
That  such  a  people  could  be  satisfied  with  the  teaching  of 
Greek,  Latin,  and  the  elements  of  the  mathematics,  was  plainly 
impossible. 

Unfortunately,  however,  instead  of  founding  schools 
of  technical  education  to  supply  the  technical  and  scien- 
tific instruction  which  the  circumstances  of  the  country 
required,  the  public  demanded  that  the  colleges,  without 
encroaching  on  their  former  curriculum  of  studies,  and 
without  extending  the  period  of  instruction,  should  add 
science  after  science  to  the  college  course  as  fast  as  the 
pressure  from  without  seemed  to  require  it.  By  their 
general  compliance  with  this  demand,  the  colleges  them- 
selves had  done  much  to  withdraw  public  attention  from 
the  true  and  fundamental  object  of  collegiate  education ; 
and  the  overloading  of  the  course  had  made  more  than 
a  superficial  study  of  the  sciences  merely  impossible.  Dr. 
Wayland  had  calculated  that  the  average  length  of  time 
which  could  be  devoted  to  each  several  subject  of  study 
in  American  colleges,  apart  from  Latin  and  Greek,  was 
but  a  fraction  over  six  weeks !  Hence  a  new  cause  of 
dissatisfaction  had  arisen,  and  the  colleges  had  found 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  189 

that  in  their  attempt  to  subordinate  their  own  proper 
function  to  the  supplying  of  "  practical "  (that  is,  scien- 
tific, technical,  and  professional)  instruction,  they  had 
justly  subjected  themselves  to  general  distrust,  since  it 
was  clearly  impossible  for  them,  in  the  time  at  their  dis- 
posal, thoroughly  to  teach  the  many  subjects  which  they 
professed  to  teach. 

In  view  of  all  that  had  been  said,  the  Faculty  recom- 
mended that,  if  any  reorganization  of  the  plan  of  instruc- 
tion were  to  be  made,  it  should  include  the  following 
particulars : 

1.  To  prescribe   a   definite   curriculum   of   study,  de- 
signed as  a  mental  discipline   and   extending  over  four 
years,   to   which  all   regular   candidates   for  graduation 
should  be  obliged  to  conform.     This  curriculum  to  in- 
clude only  those  branches  of  study,  or  certainly  very  few 
besides  those,  which,  by  the  consent  of  the  learned  in  all 
ages,  are  entitled  to  be  regarded  as  the  best  instruments 
for  evolving  and  exercising  the  powers  of  the  mind;  and 
no  study  to  be  introduced  into  the  first  two  years  which 
should  not  be  obligatory  on  all  the  students. 

2.  The  Faculty,  at  the  proper  time,  to  select  from  the 
remaining,  or   elective,  group  of  studies,  such  as  should 
seem  to  them  best  fitted  to  the  intellectual  wants  of  each 
student,  as  ascertained  by  observation  of  his  mental  hab- 
its  and   attainments   during  the  first  two  years;  and  to 
provide  for   his   instruction   in  these,  without  requiring 
him  to  take  the  rest  of  that  group. 

3.  To  refer  to  the  elective  group  of  studies, 

a.  Such  as  deal  principally  with  facts  of  observation; 
including  all  the  branches   of   natural  history,  and   also 
geology,  mineralogy,  physiology,  meteorology,  and  possibly 
a  second  course  of  chemistry. 

b.  Such  as  require  a  peculiar  aptitude  for   their  sue- 


190  MEMOIKS   OF 

cessful  prosecution  ;  including  all  the  branches  of  the 
mathematics  which  rest  upon  the  algebraic  or  symbolic 
method  (elementary  algebra  excepted),  and  embracing  in 
the  existing  course  algebra  applied  to  geometry,  analyti- 
cal geometry,  and  the  calculus,  differential  and  integral; 
to  which  might  be  added  spherical  trigonometry. 

c.  The  study  of  the  languages,  ancient  or  modern,  be- 
yond the  limit  prescribed  in  the  obligatory  course. 

The  Faculty  entered  into  no  argument  concerning  the 
distinction  they  had  thus  made  between  the  subjects 
with  which  the  regular  curriculum  had  been  overloaded, 
further  than  to  say  that  the  obligatory  studies  would  still 
be  such  as  are  universally  regarded  as  furnishing  the  best 
discipline  for  the  mind,  and  such  as  are  indispensable  to 
a  man  of  liberal  education.  As  to  the  elective  studies 
they  remarked  that  it  was  admitted  to  be  impossible  for  a 
student,  devoting  only  the  short  space  of  a  few  weeks  to 
each  of  them,  to  become  really  proficient  in  all,  or  perhaps 
in  any;  so  that  in  the  plan  proposed  there  would  simply 
be  an  elimination  of  studies  in  which  he  could  not  be 
proficient,  so  as  to  leave  time  for  a  successful  prosecution 
of  the  rest.  The  Report  closed  with  an  earnest  recom- 
mendation, enforced  by  considerable  argument,  that  the 
grade  of  scholarship  in  the  University  "  should  depend,  to 
a  degree  almost  exclusive  of  every  other  test,  upon  periodi- 
cal and  final  examinations,  and  very  little,  if  at  all,  upon 
the  record  of  daily  recitations." 

As  might  have  been  expected,  the  action  of  the  Board 
of  Trustees  was  a  compromise  between  the  two  extreme 
propositions  which  were  now  before  them.  On  the  one 
hand,  students  were  not  allowed  to  "study  what  they 
pleased,  all  that  they  pleased,  and  nothing  that  they  did 
not  please,"  nor  were  the  Faculty  required  to  perform 
impossibilities.  Partial  course  students  were  admitted, 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  191 

but  on  conditions  which  subjected  their  studies  to  the 
control  of  the  Faculty,  and  prevented  the  opportunity  of 
idleness.  Certificates  of  graduation  in  particular  depart- 
ments of  study  were  provided  for,  but  the  degree  of 
Bachelor  was  stringently  confined  to  those  who  should 
complete  the  entire  collegiate  course.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  proposal  of  the  Faculty  to  eliminate  certain  studies 
from  the  regular  course,  by  classing  them  as  elective 
studies,  which  might,  or  might  not,  be  pursued  by  partic- 
ular students  at  the  discretion  of  the  Faculty,  was  not 
approved.  In  short,  the  existing  curriculum  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Alabama  remained  unchanged,  and  the  conces- 
sion made  to  Governor  Collier's  party  was  merely  formal. 
It  is  probable  that  this  result  was  satisfactory  to  the 
Faculty,  who  had  really  desired  no  change,  and  who  had 
deprecated  the  adoption  of  the  much  misunderstood  sys- 
tem of  the  University  of  Virginia  because  an  adoption  of 
that  system,  as  it  was  popularly  understood,  would,  in 
their  opinion,  be  destructive  of  the  existing  system. 
They  had  probably  not  expected  their  own  alternative 
proposal  to  be  seriously  entertained,  but  thought  it  well  to 
put  it  forward  to  illustrate  a  view  of  the  existing  college 
curriculum  which  would  serve  to  emphasize  the  great 
danger  of  the  movement  they  felt  bound  to  oppose.  It 
served  its  purpose  in  that  way,  and  it  also  made  it  easier 
for  the  Board  of  Trustees  to  deny  by  far  the  greater  part 
of  what  had  been  demanded  by  Governor  Collier's  party, 
since  it  enabled  the  Trustees  to  say  that  they  had,  at  the 
same  time,  rejected  a  proposal  of  the  Faculty.  In  other 
words,  while  the  proposal  of  the  Faculty  was  intrinsically 
worthy  of  grave  consideration,  its  practical  use  in  the 
controversy  was  to  serve  as  a  tub  to  the  popular  whale. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  Report  above  considered  was 
prepared   under   somewhat   serious   disadvantages.     The 


192  MEMOIRS   OP 

action  of  the  Board  of  Trustees  to  which  it  was  a  response 
had  been  taken  on  the  12th  day  of  July,  and  had  been 
immediately  referred  by  the  Faculty  to  the  Committee 
of  which  Barnard  was  chairman,  with  instructions  to 
submit  the  draft  of  a  report  on  the  18th  of  September 
following.  These  instructions  were  obeyed ;  but  in  the 
meantime  Barnard  had  been  absent  from  the  State,  and 
had  been  engaged  in  conferences  and  negotiations  which 
resulted  in  his  removal  to  a  new  field  of  labor. 

The  two  chairs  of  Physics  and  Chemistry  had  become 
vacant  in  the  recently  established  University  of  Missis- 
sippi. Barnard  had  been  urged  by  a  member  of  the 
Faculty  of  that  institution  to  become  a  candidate  for  one 
of  them,  but  had  positively  declined.  The  rector  of  the 
Episcopal  Church  in  Tuskaloosa,  however,  being  involved 
in  an  unpleasant  controversy  with  his  vestry,  and  desir- 
ing to  return  to  the  work  of  teaching  in  which  he  had 
formerly  been  engaged,  resolved  to  be  a  candidate  for  the 
chair  of  Chemistry,  and  thought  it  judicious  to  visit 
Oxford,  the  seat  of  the  Mississippi  University,  at  the 
time  appointed  for  the  election.  He  invited  Barnard,  who 
had  been  his  devoted  friend  and  champion  in  his  church 
troubles,  to  accompany  him  on  his  excursion,  and  Barnard 
complied.  Between  Oxford  and  Tuskaloosa  there  was 
no  direct  communication  either  by  rail  or  by  water.  The 
trip  was  therefore  made  by  carriage.  Two  short  stops  were 
made  at  Columbus  on  the  Tombigbee  and  at  Waverley, 
a  neighboring  landing  on  the  same  river.  At  the  former 
place  they  met  Colonel  S  M.  Meek,  an  alumnus  of  the 
University  at  Tuskaloosa  •,  at  Waverley  they  were  guests 
of  Colonel  George  Young,  a  leading  trustee  of  the  Uni- 
versity at  Oxford.  Both  of  these  gentlemen  strongly 
recommended  that  Barnard  should  become  a  candidate 
for  one  of  the  vacant  chairs  at  Oxford,  but  he  continued 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  193 

resolute  in  his  determination  to  remain  in  Alabama.  On 
their  arrival  at  Oxford  they  found  the  Board  in  session. 
The  President  of  the  Board  was  Colonel  Jacob  Thompson, 
afterwards  Secretary  of  the  Interior  under  President 
Buchanan  ;  the  President  of  the  University  was  the  Hon. 
A.  B.  Longstreet,  an  uncle  of  the  famous  Confederate 
General  Longstreet.  Barnard's  reputation  appeared  to 
be  well  known  to  the  Trustees,  and  several  of  them  asked 
him  to  permit  them  to  present  his  name  as  a  candidate. 
As  he  had  held  the  chair  of  Chemistry  at  Tuskaloosa  for 
six  years,  they  naturally  desired  to  elect  him  to  the  same 
chair  in  their  institution  ;  but  he  absolutely  refused  to  be 
a  competitor  against  his  friend,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Johnson. 
Under  much  pressure,  he  was  induced  to  say  that  he 
would  accept  the  chair  of  Mathematics  and  Physics,  and 
he  then  learned  for  the  first  time  that  Professor  Hill,  a 
distinguished  native  of  Mississippi  and  afterwards  one 
of  the  two  Confederate  generals  of  that  name,  was  a  can- 
didate for  that  chair.  The  Board  spent  several  days  in 
conference  before  proceeding  to  an  election.  Barnard 
was  elected  to  the  chair  of  Chemistry,  which  he  had 
declined  in  advance.  On  receiving  an  official  notification 
of  the  action  of  the  Board,  he  promptly  replied,  express- 
ing his  thanks  to  the  Board,  but  positively  refusing  the 
appointment.  In  truth,  he  felt  much  relieved  at  the  issue 
of  a  negotiation  which  he  had  in  no  way  invited,  and 
had  not  desired.  His  interests  and  affections  were  still 
with  the  University  of  Alabama,  and  he  had  no  desire 
to  leave  it.  There,  his  position  was  already  assured  by 
a  continuous  service  of  many  years ;  in  Mississippi  he 
would  have  to  form  new  associations  and  participate  in 
the  difficult  work  of  establishing  a  university  system 
in  an  untried  field.  He  had  been  overpersuaded  to  con- 
sent to  accept  any  position  at  Oxford,  and  he  congratu- 


194  MEMOIRS  OF 

lated  himself  that  the  action  of  the  Board  had  released  him 
from  his  pledge.  His  satisfaction  was  of  short  duration. 
In  less  than  half  an  hour  after  he  had  returned  his  answer 
to  the  Board,  the  clerk  of  that  body  returned  with  the 
announcement  that  he  had  been  elected  to  the  chair  of 
Mathematics  and  Natural  Philosophy,  a  position  which 
he  had  pledged  himself  to  accept.  He  accepted  it  accord- 
ingly; and  without  delay,  but  with  a  heavy  heart,  he  set 
out  with  his  friend  Johnson  on  their  homeward  journey. 
Johnson,  too,  was  disappointed,  but  he  bore  his  disap- 
pointment better  than  Barnard  bore  his  new  honors. 
The  University  election  was  a  subject  of  interest  all  along 
the  road,  and  when  they  had  sat  down  to  their  evening 
meal  at  their  first  stopping-place,  Barnard,  after  vainly  try- 
ing to  eat,  rose  and  left  the  table.  The  kindly  landlady  of 
the  hostelry  said  to  Johnson,  "Your  friend  seems  to  be  un- 
well. I  fear  he  has  been  unsuccessful  at  Oxford."  "No, 
madam,"  said  Johnson,  "he  is  sick  because  he  has  suc- 
ceeded." When  they  reached  Tuskaloosa,  Barnard  found 
it  no  easy  task  to  tell  Mrs.  Barnard  of  the  change  which 
must  now  be  made.  She  was  much  distressed,  for  she 
had  been  very  happy  in  Tuskaloosa,  and  she  had  a  strong 
aversion  to  Mississippi  as  a  "repudiating  State";  but 
when  he  explained  what  had  occurred,  and  told  her  that 
his  honor  was  so  pledged  that  he  could  not  now  retreat 
from  his  engagement,  she  desisted  from  her  remon- 
strances. "  I  will  do  the  best  I  can,"  she  said,  "  but  if  I 
had  children  to  bring  up,  I  would  never  take  them  to  a 
repudiating  State."  Thenceforward  she  expressed  no 
aversion  to  the  change  and  no  regret  after  it  had  been 
made. 

These  events  had  occurred  about  the  beginning  of  Sep- 
tember, and  as  the  next  session  of  the  University  at  Oxford 
was  to  begin  early  in  October,  Barnard  had  little  time  in 


FREDERICK  A.    P.   BARNARD  195 

which  to  wind  up  his  affairs  in  Tuskaloosa  and  remove  to 
his  new  home.  In  this  short  space,  however,  it  seemed 
desirable  that  his  ordination  as  a  deacon  should  take  place. 
A  somewhat  amusing  incident  was  connected  with  that 
service,  of  which  Barnard  himself  has  given  the  following 
account : 

Bishop  Cobbs  resided  in  Montgomery,  and  I  desired  to  be 
ordained  by  him  before  leaving  his  diocese.  He  made  an  ap- 
pointment to  meet  me  at  Selma,  fifty  miles  below  Montgomery 
on  the  Alabama  Biver,  and  about  ninety  miles  from  Tuskaloosa. 
I  reached  Selma  by  appointment,  but  in  advance  of  the  Bishop. 
Next  day  he  arrived,  accompanied  by  a  presbyter  to  assist  in 
the  examination ;  but  here  we  encountered  a  singular  difficulty. 
The  yellow  fever  had  recently  appeared  at  Mobile  and  also  at 
Montgomery.  Selma  had  been  spared,  and  the  municipal  au- 
thorities had  adopted  an  ordinance  providing  that  any  person 
arriving  from  an  infected  place  should  be  compelled  to  depart 
forthwith.  The  Bishop  and  his  companion  were  immediately 
served  with  a  notice  to  leave.  Our  whole  party  prepared  to 
drive  to  the  neighboring  town  of  Cahaba ;  but  before  our  car- 
riages could  be  got  ready,  the  absurdity  of  the  thing  seemed  to 
strike  the  people  of  the  place,  and  they  declared  that  the  Bishop 
of  the  diocese  should  not  be  driven  out  of  the  town.  On  the 
next  Sunday  I  received  my  first  orders  and  preached  my  first 
sermon.  Eeturning  to  Tuskaloosa,  I  preached  twice,  but,  oddly 
enough,  I  was  not  permitted  to  preach  in  the  parish  church. 
The  Vestry,  who  had  arbitrarily  dismissed  the  rector,  Mr. 
Johnson,  against  the  public  protest  of  a  large  majority  of  the 
congregation  and  without  consulting  any  diocesan  authority, 
had  now  locked  him  out  of  the  church.  He  therefore  continued 
to  hold  services  in  the  large  hall  of  a  building  which  had  been 
used  as  a  boarding  school,  and  in  that  hall  I  preached  on  the 
second  Sunday  after  my  ordination.  There  were  many  diffi- 
culties attending  our  removal  to  Oxford.  We  had  to  drive 
there,  of  course ;  and  on  the  very  evening  before  we  were  to 
start,  a  valuable  horse  that  I  had  had  for  several  years  took 
suddenly  ill  and  died.  My  books  and  furniture  had  to  be  sent 
by  a  very  roundabout  way,  first  down  the  river  four  hundred 


196  MEMOIRS   OF 

miles  to  Mobile,  thence  by  sea  two  hundred  miles  to  New 
Orleans,  thence  up  the  Mississippi  five  hundred  miles  to  Mem- 
phis, and  then  sixty  miles  by  wagon  to  Oxford.  We  made  our 
trip  without  accident;  but  at  the  places  where  we  stopped  it 
was  not  encouraging  to  me  to  hear  the  professor  whose  place  I 
was  to  fill  constantly  mentioned  as  a  man  whose  loss  to  the 
University  was  simply  irreparable.  I  entered  on  my  new  posi- 
tion with  a  feeling  of  sincere  discouragement,  but,  as  time 
passed,  I  began  to  have  reason  to  think  that  my  success  con- 
soled the  authorities  of  the  University  for  the  loss  of  my 
predecessor. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  19T 


CHAPTER  IX 

The  University  domain  at  Oxford — Barnard  accepts  pastoral  charge  of 
the  church  at  Oxford  —  Confusion  in  the  financial  affairs  of  the  Uni- 
versity—  History  of  its  endowment  —  Barnard's  investigations  —  Bar- 
nard elected  to  succeed  President  Longstreet  — Discipline  improved  — 
Powers  of  Faculty  enlarged  —  True  university  organization  projected 
—  Open  letter  to  the  Board  of  Trustees  —  Plan  for  the  rearrangement 
of  the  college  curriculum  —  Post-graduate  schools  —  Recitations  and 
lectures  —  A  noble  appeal  for  the  higher  education  —  Astronomy  — 
Its  practical  utility — An  appeal  to  State  pride  —  In  what  the  great- 
ness of  a  State  consists. 

THE  University  of  Mississippi  was  situated  at  a  dis- 
tance of  about  a  mile  from  the  village  of  Oxford,  in  the 
middle  of  a  section  of  public  land,  one  mile  square.  The 
University  domain,  with  the  exception  of  the  ground  on 
which  its  buildings  stood,  was  still  covered  by  the  prime- 
val forest,  through  which  a  broad  avenue  had  been  cut  to 
the  village.  The  buildings  consisted  of  a  great  hall,  a 
chapel,  several  dormitories,  and  the  dwellings  of  the  pro- 
fessors, all  of  which  were  arranged  in  a  circle  of  about 
two  hundred  yards  in  diameter.  On  Barnard's  arrival  he 
found  none  of  the  professors'  dwellings  vacant,  and  for 
the  first  year  he  was  obliged  to  take  lodgings  at  an  hotel 
in  the  village.  Both  while  living  there  and  afterwards 
when  he  had  a  house  on  the  University  grounds,  he  sadly 
missed  and  regretted  the  happy  associations  he  had  left 
behind  him  at  Tuskaloosa,  and,  in  part  perhaps  for  that 
reason,  he  plunged  into  an  amount  of  work  which  must 
have  overwhelmed  a  less  vigorous  constitution.  The 
professor  of  chemistry  who  had  been  elected  by  the  Board 
of  Trustees  failed  to  appear  for  duty,  and  did  not  trouble 


198  MEMOIRS   OF 

himself  even  to  explain  his  neglect  to  comply  with  the 
conditions  of  his  appointment.  The  Executive  Commit- 
tee of  the  Board  requested  Barnard  to  fill  the  gap  ;  and 
accordingly,  during  his  first  year  at  Oxford,  he  gave  a 
full  course  of  lectures  in  experimental  chemistry  while 
teaching  at  the  same  time  the  higher  mathematics,  phys- 
ics, astronomy  and  the  elements  of  civil  engineering. 
Besides  these  sufficiently  onerous  duties,  he  felt  it  to  be 
his  duty  to  take  charge  of  the  Episcopal  church  in  Ox- 
ford. He  had  hardly  settled  himself  there  when  he  re- 
ceived a  letter  from  a  clergyman  who  had  held  fortnightly 
services  for  the  Episcopalians  of  the  village,  expressing 
his  satisfaction  that  Oxford  had  now  a  resident  clergy- 
man, and  requesting  Barnard  to  relieve  him  of  the  charge. 
The  proposal  was  entirely  unexpected,  but  it  could  hardly 
be  declined.  In  the  end  it  proved  to  be  advantageous 
in  many  ways.  He  was  obliged,  of  course,  to  proceed  to 
priest's  orders,  and  so  took  full  rank  as  a  clergyman  ;  the 
congregation  prospered  ;  through  his  church  relations  he 
was  brought  into  intimate  conference  and  association  with 
many  of  the  most  notable  people  of  the  State  ;  his  posi- 
tion and  reputation  as  a  clergyman  strengthened  his  in- 
fluence as  an  educator  ;  and  so  he  was  enabled  to  lay 
broad  foundations  for  the  great  work  which  he  seems  to 
have  contemplated  from  the  beginning  of  his  service  in 
Mississippi. 

In  two  respects  the  condition  of  the  University  was 
gravely  unsatisfactory.  Its  discipline  was  inefficient,  and 
its  finances  were  in  great  confusion.  Barnard's  loyalty 
to  his  superior,  President  Longstreet,  forbade  his  inter- 
fering with  discipline  beyond  the  limits  of  his  own  de- 
partment, and  it  was  by  special  request  of  the  President 
himself  that  he  entered  into  a  laborious  investigation  of 
the  endowment.  In  the  Act  of  Congress  by  which  Mis- 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD  199 

sissippi  had  been  admitted  to  the  Union,  certain  public 
lands  were  set  apart  for  the  endowment  of  "  a  seminary 
of  learning  "to  be  established  within  the  State.  By  the 
terms  of  the  act  the  Legislature  of  the  State  was  consti- 
tuted sole  trustee  of  that  endowment,  under  the  condi- 
tion, however,  that  the  principal  acquired  by  disposing 
of  those  lands  should  be  kept  intact  by  the  State,  and 
should  never  be  diminished.  This  trust  and  the  condi- 
tion annexed  to  it  were  embodied  in  the  constitution  of 
the  State,  but  nearly  twenty  years  elapsed  before  any 
steps  were  taken  for  the  establishment  of  a  seminary  of 
learning.  In  the  meantime  the  Legislature  endeavored 
to  raise  the  necessary  endowment  by  disposing  of  the 
seminary  lands.  Certain  portions  of  them  were  leased, 
but  the  method  of  leasing  proved  to  be  unsatisfactory, 
and  other  portions  were  sold  in  fee.  Under  the  provi- 
sions of  several  various  successive  acts  of  the  Legislature 
the  price  of  the  lands  sold  was  paid  by  the  purchaser 
either  in  full  at  the  time  of  purchase  or  in  a  series  of  an- 
nual instalments.  All  monies  received  on  account  of  the 
Seminary  Fund  were  deposited  in  certain  banks  to  the 
credit  of  that  fund  ;  but  in  the  financial  crisis  which  oc- 
curred during  General  Jackson's  second  term  as  President 
of  the  United  States,  the  banks  of  Mississippi  were  in- 
volved in  the  general  ruin,  and  their  creditors,  including 
the  State  itself,  lost  nearly  all  the  funds  deposited  with 
them.  Thus  "  the  Seminary  Fund  "  was  heavily  reduced, 
and  in  1854,  when  Barnard  first  went  to  the  University,  all 
that  was  supposed  to  remain  of  it  was  only  about  $180,000. 
On  learning  what  was  then  known  of  this  history,  Bar- 
nard made  further  inquiry  and  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  State,  in  accepting  the  Seminary  trust  and  giving 
a  constitutional  guarantee  that  the  Seminary  Fund  should 
not  be  diminished,  had  made  itself  both  legally  and  mor- 


200  MEMOIRS   OF 

ally  liable  for  the  losses  which  the  Fund  had  sustained. 
He  explained  his  view  of  the  matter  to  Mr.  Jacob  Thomp- 
son, President  of  the  Board  of  Trustees,  who  at  once 
became  greatly  interested,  and  in  the  month  of  January, 
1855,  proceeded  to  make  a  careful  examination  of  the  laws 
relating  to  the  Seminary  Fund.  The  result  of  his  inves- 
tigation was  the  discovery  of  evidence  that  the  accounts 
of  the  Fund  had  not  been  kept  in  the  manner  prescribed 
by  law,  and  that  the  whole  business  of  the  Seminary 
Fund  was  in  great  confusion.  Mr.  Thompson  saw  that 
a  still  more  careful  examination  of  former  legislative  acts 
was  necessary  and  that  extensive  computations  would  be 
required  to  discover  the  amounts  due  to  the  Seminary 
Fund  under  the  various  laws  which  had  been  in  force  at 
different  times.  He  therefore  begged  President  Long- 
street  to  proceed  to  Jackson  to  assist  in  the  investigation 
and  join  in  such  measures  as  might  appear  to  be  advisable 
in  view  of  its  results.  President  Longstreet  was  unable 
to  leave  the  University  at  that  time,  and  sent  Barnard  as 
his  substitute.  With  much  labor  Barnard  scrutinized  all 
acts  of  the  Legislature  relating  to  the  Seminary  Fund,  as- 
certained the  amounts  due  to  the  Fund  under  the  opera- 
tion of  each  act  severally,  and  drew  up  a  report,  which 
was  adopted  by  Mr.  Thompson,  including  these  particu- 
lars. This  report  was  presented  to  the  Governor,  the 
Hon.  John  J.  McRae,  who  made  it  the  subject  of  a 
special  message  to  the  Legislature.  The  facts  communi- 
cated to  the  Legislature  were  startling  enough,  since  they 
positively  proved  that  the  Seminary  Fund,  that  is,  the 
University  Fund,  the  integrity  of  which  had  been  guar- 
anteed by  the  State,  amounted  to  something  over 
$1,100,000;  that  only  about  $200,000  of  that  capital  had 
been  expended  for  buildings,  and  consequently  that  the 
State  was  indebted  to  the  University  Fund  in  the  sum  of 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  201 

about  $900,000.  The  Governor  recommended  that  the 
debt  should  be  immediately  acknowledged  and  its  pay- 
ment secured  by  the  issue  of  bonds  of  the  State  to  the  re- 
quired amount.  The  subject  was  new  to  the  members  of 
the  Legislature  and  the  sum  called  for  was  large  ;  yet  the 
Senate  concurred  in  the  Governor's  recommendations. 
The  House  of  Representatives  hesitated.  Meanwhile,  a 
carefully  prepared  memorial,  written  by  Barnard,  had 
been  presented  to  the  Legislature  by  the  Trustees  of  the 
University,  setting  forth  the  inadequacy  of  the  provision 
made  for  the  equipment  of  the  University  with  many 
appliances  which  were  indispensable  to  its  efficiency,  and 
praying  for  a  direct  appropriation  from  the  State  treas- 
ury. Barnard  asked  and  received  permission  to  address 
the  Legislature  in  behalf  of  the  memorial.  A  joint  session 
of  the  two  houses  was  held  for  that  purpose,  and  he  then 
showed  the  meagreness  of  the  provision  of  books  and  ap- 
paratus which  had  been  made  for  the  University,  urging 
his  audience,  if  they  wished  their  State  institution  to  take 
rank  with  other  similar  institutions,  not  to  withhold  from 
it  the  necessary  means  to  do  so.  It  was  objected,  natu- 
rally enough,  that  the  representations  made  to  the  Legis- 
lature on  the  whole  subject  of  the  Seminary  Fund  were 
merely  ex  parte  statements,  and  that  it  was  due  to  the 
State,  before  complying  with  demands  of  such  impor- 
tance, that  a  thoroughly  impartial  investigation  should  be 
made  by  a  commission  appointed  for  that  purpose.  A 
commissioner  was  appointed  accordingly  ;  and  to  meet 
the  pressing  present  necessities  of  the  University,  as  they 
had  been  exhibited  in  the  memorial  of  the  Trustees,  an 
annual  appropriation  of  $25,000  was  voted,  to  be  continued 
for  five  years  and  to  be  devoted  exclusively  to  the  im- 
provement of  the  library,  the  scientific  collections  and  the 
apparatus  in  use.  Unfortunately  it  turned  out  that  the 


202  MEMOIRS   OF 

commissioner,  though  his  appointment  was  in  every  way 
acceptable  to  the  friends  of  the  University,  was  so  over- 
whelmed with  other  business  as  to  be  unable  to  discharge 
his  function.  At  the  end  of  five  years  he  had  made  no 
report.  At  the  session  of  the  Legislature  in  1860  the  an- 
nual appropriation  of  $25,000  was  extended  for  a  further 
period,  but  long  before  that  period  had  expired  the  sessions 
of  the  University  had  been  suspended  by  the  war  between 
the  States.  Thus  the  well-meant  effort  of  Barnard  and 
Thompson  had  not  all  the  success  which  seemed  at  one 
time  to  be  within  their  reach,  and  yet  the  special  appro- 
priation for  books  and  apparatus  which  was  made  at  the 
session  of  1855  enabled  the  Board  of  Trustees  to  add 
much  to  the  efficiency  of  the  University. 

In  the  month  of  June  of  the  following  year  President 
Longstreet,  without  any  previous  notice  of  his  intention, 
handed  in  his  resignation  to  the  Board  of  Trustees.  By 
common  consent,  at  least  among  the  Faculty,  it  had  been 
assumed  that  the  Rev.  Dr.  Waddell,  Professor  of  Greek, 
would  succeed  to  the  presidency  in  case  of  President 
Longstreet's  retirement.  In  this  assumption  Barnard  had 
concurred,  and  he  was  somewhat  surprised  to  learn  that 
he  himself  was  mentioned  as  a  competitor  for  the  vacant 
position.  He  made  no  canvass  for  the  appointment,  but 
started  immediately  for  the  North  to  be  present  at  the 
inauguration  of  the  Dudley  Observatory  at  Albany,  which 
had  been  arranged  to  take  place  during  the  annual  meet- 
ing of  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Science.  While  at  Albany,  on  the  day  of  the  inaugura- 
tion, he  received  a  telegram  informing  him  that  he  had 
been  elected  to  the  presidency  of  the  University,  and  after 
an  exceedingly  short  vacation  he  returned  to  Oxford  to 
prepare  for  the  new  and  responsible  duties  to  which  he 
had  been  called. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  203 

His  first  work  after  the  reopening  of  the  University 
was  to  put  its  discipline  into  a  state  of  efficiency,  and 
by  a  happy  union  of  energy  and  mildness  he  succeeded 
in  repressing  disorder  and  subduing  the  spirit  of  insubor- 
dination. Dr.  Waddell,  displeased  and  mortified  at  his 
disappointment,  had  resigned  his  chair  and  accepted  the 
presidency  of  a  new  Presbyterian  College  at  Lagrange, 
Tennessee,  fifty  miles  north  of  Oxford,  which  was  ex- 
pected to  be  a  formidable  rival  of  the  University  of 
Mississippi.  In  the  public  announcements  of  the  opening 
of  the  new  college,  great  stress  was  laid  on  its  religious 
character  as  an  assurance  of  the  best  moral  influences  in 
the  training  of  the  students ;  and  State  Universities,  on 
account  of  their  non-denominational  character,  were  de- 
nounced as  "godless  colleges."  A  year  or  two  later, 
when  Barnard's  administration  had  made  the  institution 
under  his  charge  a  model  of  good  discipline,  these  adver- 
tisements were  somewhat  ludicrously  recalled  by  a  sad 
experience  of  the  President  of  Lagrange.  A  regular 
meeting  of  the  Synod  being  in  session  in  the  town,  Dr. 
Waddell  invited  that  body  to  attend  divine  service  in 
the  College  chapel  on  Sunday  morning,  and  the  invitation 
was  accepted.  The  President  informed  the  students  of 
the  expected  visit  and  begged  them  to  be  on  their  good 
behavior.  Unluckily,  the  lads  thought  it  an  opportunity 
for  a  "lark"  of  the  first  order,  and  during  the  night 
preceding  the  appointed  service  they  drove  into  the 
chapel  all  the  horses,  pigs,  and  cattle  they  could  find 
running  at  large,  as  the  custom  was,  in  the  "  range  "  or 
open  forest  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  town.  The  state 
of  the  chapel  which  was  presented  to  the  wondering  eyes 
of  the  visitors  on  Sunday  morning  was  not  beautiful ; 
and  Dr.  Barnard,  who  tells  the  story  in  his  manuscript 
reminiscences,  does  not  conceal  his  satisfaction  at  the 


204  MEMOIRS   OF 

thought  that,  if  the  University  of  Mississippi  had  less 
"godliness"  than  the  College  of  Lagrange,  it  had  at 
least  much  better  discipline,  and  consequently  much 
more  decency  and  good  behavior. 

The  good  order  of  the  University  having  been  happily 
secured,  the  next  effort  of  President  Barnard  was  to 
obtain  a  proper  recognition  of  the  Faculty  as  the  re- 
sponsible teaching  body.  The  statutes  had  been  so 
framed  as  to  commit  the  regulation  of  the  most  minute 
details  of  administration,  including  even  such  matters 
as  the  ringing  of  the  college  bell  and  the  arrangement 
of  the  hours  of  recitation,  to  the  Board  of  Trustees ; 
and  he  proposed  the  adoption  of  an  entirely  new  code 
under  which  all  arrangements  directly  connected  with 
the  instruction  of  students  should  be  left  to  the  ex- 
clusive discretion  of  the  Faculty.  When  the  proposed 
code  was  submitted  to  the  Board  of  Trustees,  the  Presi- 
dent, though  not  a  member  of  that  body,  was  invited  to 
be  present.  His  proposals  were  strenuously  resisted  by 
the  framer  of  the  existing  statutes,  who  was  a  judge  of 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  State.  In  the  course  of  the 
discussion  Barnard  suggested  that  it  might  be  well  to 
call  the  other  members  of  the  Faculty  before  the  Board 
and  hear  their  views  of  a  subject  concerning  which  they 
could  give  an  opinion  founded,  not  on  theory,  but  on  the 
results  of  practical  experience.  The  members  of  the 
Faculty  were  summoned,  and  unanimously  supported 
the  opinion  of  their  chief.  Still,  the  issue  of  the  debate 
was  doubtful,  until  Barnard,  with  some  dexterity  and 
not  a  little  humor,  plied  the  argumentum  ad  hominem. 
At  that  time  most  of  the  Trustees  were  engaged  in  the 
construction  of  the  Central  Railroad  of  Mississippi  which 
was  then  in  progress,  and  he  borrowed  an  apt  illustration 
from  that  enterprise. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  205 

Gentlemen  [he  said],  you  have  undertaken  the  construc- 
tion of  a  railway  to  connect  the  town  of  Jackson,  Mississippi, 
with  the  town  of  Jackson,  Tennessee.  You  have  employed  a 
corps  of  engineers.  You  have  fixed  the  termini  of  your  road 
and  the  general  line  of  its  course ;  but  do  you  attempt  to  pre- 
scribe the  details  of  the  work  of  construction  ?  You  do  not 
undertake  to  tell  the  engineers  how  they  shall  cross  this  river, 
or  build  that  embankment,  or  cut  that  hill;  that  is  the 
engineers'  business.  You  employ  engineers  because  they  un- 
derstand that  business  better  than  you.  If  you  let  them  alone, 
they  will  do  it  judiciously.  If  you  were  to  follow  them  mile 
by  mile  and  compel  them  to  make  bridges  and  embankments 
and  tunnels  according  to  your  ideas,  the  work  would  probably 
be  spoiled.  Just  so  in  the  University.  You  have  asked  us 
to  educate  the  young  men  of  Mississippi;  you  have  appointed 
us  because  we  are  professional  teachers  and  you  believe  we 
understand  our  business ;  you  have  prescribed  the  broad  out- 
lines of  our  work,  and  we  have  undertaken  to  do  the  work 
on  those  lines.  Now,  if  you  are  to  direct  the  details  of  the 
work  at  every  step,  you  will  succeed  no  better  than  you 
would  succeed  if  you  were  to  direct  the  engineers  of  the 
Mississippi  Central  in  the  same  way.  Our  professional  knowl- 
edge and  experience  will  be  set  aside  and  rendered  useless, 
and  our  whole  work  will  probably  be  badly  botched. 

This  argument  put  an  end  to  the  discussion ;  the  new 
code  of  statutes  was  adopted,  and  the  whole  arrangement 
of  the  practical  details  of  instruction  in  the  University 
was  surrendered  by  the  Trustees  and  intrusted  to  the 
Faculty.  One  incidental  feature  of  the  new  code  was 
that  the  presiding  officer  of  the  University  should  thence- 
forward have  the  style  of  Chancellor  and  not  of  President. 

The  way  was  now  fairly  clear  for  the  far  grander  effort 
to  reconstruct  the  whole  scheme  of  the  University  course, 
so  that  in  process  of  time  the  institution  might  become 
a  University  in  the  largest  sense  of  the  word,  and  be 
thoroughly  equipped  for  all  the  functions  of  such  an 
institution  in  modern  times.  Dr.  Barnard  has  recorded 


206  MEMOIRS  OP 

that,  when  visiting  the  Hon.  Giles  M.  Hillyer  at  Natchez 
during  the  winter  of  1855,  he  observed  a  phenomenon  of 
which  he  had  often  read,  but  which  he  had  never  before 
seen.  The  weather  was  extremely  cold,  and  the  water 
in  his  pitcher  became  chilled  to  such  a  degree  that, 
although  it  continued  to  be  fluid  while  it  was  left  undis- 
turbed, a  sudden  jar  instantaneously  converted  it  into  a 
mass  of  ice.  Something  of  the  same  sort  seems  to  have 
occurred  in  his  views  of  the  higher  education  after  his 
election  to  the  presidency  of  the  University.  In  his 
Report  to  the  Trustees  of  the  University  of  Alabama, 
which  was  written  in  1854,  he  had  had  all  the  elements 
of  that  problem  clearly  before  his  mind,  but  he  gave  no 
indication  that  he  had  realized  their  far-reaching  signifi- 
cance. He  had  insisted  on  the  special  value  of  the  curric- 
ulum of  arts  as  a  mental  discipline,  without  regard  to 
the  utility,  in  other  respects,  of  the  knowledge  acquired 
in  connection  with  it.  He  had  therefore  protested  against 
a  measure  which,  in  his  opinion,  must  tend  to  mar  the 
efficiency  of  that  curriculum  without  efficiently  supply- 
ing technical  or  professional  instruction  to  students  who 
desired  it.  He  had  complained  that,  in  deference  to 
a  mistaken  demand,  the  curriculum  of  arts  had  been 
heavily  overloaded  with  extraneous  studies  which  were 
not  intended  for  mental  discipline,  and  which  could  not 
be  satisfactorily  pursued  within  the  four  years  allowed 
for  a  college  course.  He  had  shown  that  colleges 
had  been  attempting  to  fulfil  a  function  which  did  not 
properly  belong  to  them,  and  which  it  was  impossible  for 
them  to  perform.  He  had  traced  some  part  of  the  popular 
misapprehension  of  the  subject  to  a  misunderstanding  of 
the  word  "university,"  which,  in  its  original  sense,  had 
meant  simply  the  whole  society  or  community  of  per- 
sons united  in  the  University  organization.  A  univer- 


FEEDEEICK  A.   P.   BAENAED  207 

sity,  he  said,  was  a  Universitas  Doctorum  et  Scholarium, 
a  Society  or  Community  of  Teachers  and  Scholars,  not 
a  Universitas  Scientiarum,  or  a  School  of  all  Branches  of 
Knowledge.  He  showed  that  the  American  college, 
though  it  is  often  called  a  university,  does  not  at 
all  correspond  with  the  German  university,  which  is 
really  an  institution  for  professional  instruction,  but 
rather  with  the  German  gymnasium,  which  teaches 
much  the  same  branches  as  the  American  college,  though 
it  confers  no  degrees.  The  American  college  had  been 
modelled  after  the  colleges  in  English  universities,  and  its 
proper  function  was  to  teach  the  curriculum  of  arts  only, 
though  it  had  been  endowed  with  the  additional  power  of 
conferring  degrees,  which,  in  other  countries,  is  reserved 
to  the  university.  He  did  not  deny  that  professional 
schools  such  as  exist  in  Europe  under  the  auspices  of  the 
university  might  be  necessary,  but  he  did  not  in  the  least 
imply  that  they  might  form  a  part  of  the  organization 
of  an  American  university  system ;  and  it  did  not  seem 
to  have  occurred  to  him  that  an  institution  which  accepted 
the  power  to  confer  degrees  in  all  faculties,  had  thereby 
implicitly  accepted  the  functions,  and  ought  to  do  the 
duty,  of  all  faculties.  He  did  not  deny  that,  in  the  social 
and  economic  conditions  of  the  present  century,  technical 
schools  were  necessary;  he  admitted  that  such  schools 
ought  to  be  established  ;  but  so  far  from  seeming  to  think 
that  they  might  be  included  in  a  university  system,  he 
plainly  said  that,  if  they  were  as  indispensable  as  the  ad- 
vocates of  technical  education  believed,  they  would  offer 
a  proper  and  lucrative  field  for  private  enterprise  and 
investment.  In  short,  throughout  the  whole  Report,  he 
seemed  to  regard  the  college,  including  the  curriculum 
of  arts  only,  and  enjoying  the  peculiar  privilege  of  con- 
ferring degrees,  to  be  the  ideal  organization  of  an  Amer- 


208  MEMOIKS   OF 

lean  university.  If  other  schools  were  necessary,  as 
they  doubtless  were,  by  all  means  let  them  be  established, 
but  they  need  not  be  established  in  connection  with  the 
university. 

No  sooner  did  he  find  himself  the  responsible  head  of 
a  university  than  his  views  of  the  function  of  such  an 
institution  became  greatly  enlarged.  He  did  not  in  the 
least  change  his  belief  that  the  curriculum  of  arts,  as  it 
had  been  long  established,  furnished  the  best  possible 
training  for  the  mental  faculties  of  the  student,  to  what- 
ever pursuit  he  might  afterwards  bend  his  energies ;  but 
he  saw  that  the  time  devoted  to  the  curriculum  of  arts 
might  perhaps  be  advantageously  abridged.  He  began  to 
recognize  that  knowledge  of  a  practical  kind  has  an  in- 
trinsic value  which  must  not  be  overlooked  in  a  rational 
system  of  modern  education.  He  clearly  saw  that  the 
influence  of  the  higher  education  must  have  an  incal- 
culable influence  on  all  other  education,  professional, 
technical,  and  elementary.  Hence  he  reasoned  that  a 
university  thoroughly  adapted  to  the  necessities  of  the  age 
could  not  be  a  mere  Universitas  Doctorum  et  Scholarium 
of  one  particular  curriculum,  but  must  rather  be  a  Univer- 
sitas Scientiarum,  supplying  all  the  instruction  needed  in 
a  great  State  for  the  practical  uses,  as  well  as  for  the 
highest  intellectual  culture,  of  its  citizens.  To  the  reali- 
zation of  this  large  and  lofty  ideal  of  the  functions  of  a 
State  university,  Chancellor  Barnard  now  began  to  direct 
all  his  powers.  He  did  not  hope  to  succeed  immediately. 
For  the  working  out  of  plans  so  extensive  he  well  knew 
that  time  as  well  as  labor  would  be  indispensable  ;  yet  he 
thought  it  well  to  give  some  public  intimation  of  the  plans 
he  had  in  view,  while  proposing  for  the  present  only  such 
part  of  them  as  he  might  at  first  expect  to  be  successful 
in  accomplishing. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  209 

Before  proceeding  in  so  great  an  enterprise,  a  weaker 
man  would  have  sought  to  win  the  support  of  the  Trustees 
severally ;  but  in  this  matter  Barnard  felt  that  boldness 
would  be  prudence.  No  such  scheme  could  be  carried 
out  in  a  State  institution  unless  it  had  popular  support. 
The  Trustees  were  appointees  of  the  Legislature ;  the 
Legislature  represented  the  people ;  it  was  necessary  that 
the  people  who  elected  the  Legislature  should  approve  his 
scheme,  or  the  Board  of  Trustees,  however  its  members 
might  sympathize  with  his  views,  would  be  powerless  to 
make  them  operative.  He  therefore  resolved  to  make  his 
appeal  at  once  to  the  Trustees  and  the  people  of  the  State 
by  addressing  an  Open  Letter  to  the  Board,  and  circu- 
lating it  extensively  throughout  the  State  before  it  was 
formally  presented  at  a  session  of  the  Board.  Thus 
public  opinion  was  brought  to  bear  on  the  Trustees 
before  they  were  called  to  act,  and  Trustees  on  whose 
support  he  had  reason  to  count  were  fortified  by  the 
previously  ascertained  sentiment  of  their  fellow-citizens. 
A  few  of  the  members  of  the  Board  were  at  first  disposed 
to  resent  the  publication  of  Barnard's  letter  as  an  attempt 
to  coerce  them  to  submit  to  his  dictation,  and  for  a  time 
he  had  some  cause  to  apprehend  that  he  had  overshot  his 
mark.  In  the  end,  however,  the  majority  of  the  Board 
sustained  him  ;  all  opposition  was  withdrawn ;  the  leader 
of  the  dissentients  had  a  son  in  the  University  who  was 
ardently  devoted  to  Barnard,  and  he  presently  became 
one  of  Barnard's  most  faithful  supporters.  The  policy  of 
boldness  turned  out  to  have  been  really  a  policy  of  pru- 
dence, and  from  that  time  until  his  withdrawal  from  the 
University  at  the  opening  of  the  war  the  utmost  harmony 
of  sentiment  continued  to  exist  between  the  Chancellor 
and  the  Board  of  Trustees. 

Part  of  the  contents  of  this  important  publication  had 


210  MEMOIRS  OF 

already  been  substantially  set  forth  in  his  Alabama  Report, 
and  may  be  mentioned  very  briefly.  He  frankly  admitted 
the  charge  that  American  colleges  had  not  succeeded  in 
keeping  up  with  the  educational  demand  of  the  times, 
and  he  urged  that  in  attempting  to  satisfy  all  demands 
they  had  impaired  their  efficiency  in  their  proper  work, 
without  satisfying  popular  expectation.  The  proper  work 
of  a  college  was  to  train  the  minds  of  its  students  by 
means  of  a  curriculum  of  studies  selected  with  an  ex- 
clusive view  to  that  end.  The  public  had  demanded  the 
addition  of  many  studies  to  the  college  course  without 
regard  to  their  utility  as  means  of  intellectual  training, 
and  without  adding  to  the  time  within  which  a  college 
course  must  be  concluded.  Thus  the  curriculum  of  arts 
had  been  overloaded  with  studies  which  were  not  specially 
adapted  to  the  culture  of  the  mental  faculties,  and  which 
could  not  be  satisfactorily  mastered  within  the  time  de- 
voted to  them.  A  mere  examination  of  the  schedule 
of  the  studies  in  any  college  would  show  how  impossible 
a  task  had  been  attempted.  So  absurd  was  it  that  it 
could  only  have  been  framed  by  almost  imperceptible 
degrees,  because  no  rational  person  would  have  failed  to 
see  its  sheer  impossibility  if  it  had  ever  been  proposed  in 
its  integrity  as  an  original  scheme. 

The  necessity  of  some  reform  had  been  keenly  felt  by 
enlightened  educators,  and  measures  of  reform  had  been 
introduced  in  several  important  colleges  by  the  introduc- 
tion of  parallel  courses  of  study  which  were  open  to  the 
selection  of  the  student.  At  the  University  of  Virginia 
all  departments  of  learning  had  been  left  open  to  the 
choice  of  students,  but  that  plan,  whether  successful  or 
not  in  that  institution,  had  been  followed  with  great 
inconvenience,  and  even  by  disaster,  elsewhere.  Some 
colleges  had  been  more  successful  in  establishing  extra- 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD  211 

collegiate  departments,  devoted  mainly  to  theoretical  and 
practical  science,  and  to  the  applications  of  chemistry  and 
natural  philosophy  to  the  arts.  Finally,  the  same  general 
sense  of  the  necessity  of  some  change  in  the  present  over- 
loaded college  curriculum  had  "manifested  itself  in  the 
establishment,  in  a  college  which  had  previously  presented 
but  a  single  course  of  study  terminating  in  the  degree  of 
Bachelor  of  Arts,  of  a  second  course,  intended  to  com- 
mence where  the  first  ends,  and  leading  to  the  higher 
degree  of  Master  of  Arts."  This  last  course  Barnard 
himself  preferred.  It  had  been  distinctly  approved  by 
Dr.  Thornwell  of  the  College  of  South  Carolina;  at 
Brown  University,  in  accordance  with  the  earnest  recom- 
mendation of  Dr.  Wayland,  it  had  been  already  intro- 
duced ;  even  the  University  of  Virginia,  which  permitted 
its  students  to  select  their  own  departments  of  study, 
nevertheless  made  definite  exactions  of  all  candidates  for 
the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts,  and  much  higher  exactions 
of  candidates  for  the  degree  of  Master ;  "  and  during  the 
past  year,  Columbia  College  in  the  City  of  New  York,  one 
of  the  wealthiest  institutions  in  the  country,  and  also  one 
of  the  earliest  established,  after  a  long  period  of  deliberate 
inquiry  and  extensive  correspondence  with  the  most  ex- 
perienced friends  of  education  throughout  the  United 
States,  had  instituted  exactly  the  system  which  was  now 
recommended." 

If  these  views  should  be  approved,  the  first  measure 
of  reform  would  be  a  reduction  of  the  undergraduate 
course  by  "  excluding  from  the  curriculum  of  study  all 
those  branches  of  science  which  are  confessedly  modern 
additions,  and  along  with  these  the  modern  languages." 
The  course,  as  thus  reconstructed,  would  then  include 
the  English,  Latin,  and  Greek  languages,  the  elementary 
branches  of  the  pure  mathematics,  the  mechanical  branches 


212  MEMOIRS   OF 

of  natural  philosophy,  logic,  rhetoric,  the  principles  of 
criticism,  moral  and  mental  philosophy,  composition,  and 
elocution.  In  the  closing  year  it  might  be  proper  to 
introduce  elementary  courses  in  chemistry,  and  some 
topics  of  natural  philosophy  which  are  not  strictly  me- 
chanical ;  but  the  object  of  introducing  these  courses 
should  be  simply  to  give  the  student  some  foretaste  of 
these  subjects  which  might  stimulate  him  to  a  further 
study  of  them  in  the  higher  department.  In  no  case 
ought  they  to  be  matters  of  examination  for  the  Bach- 
elor's degree. 

At  first  the  arrangements  of  the  post-graduate  depart- 
ment must  be  provisional. 

To  the  post-graduate  department  may  be  turned  over  those 
branches  of  science  and  letters  which  are  excluded  from  the 
former,  and  which,  at  present,  are  imperfectly  taught.  Their 
number  may  from  time  to  time  be  increased  by  adding  new 
ones  as  the  wants  of  the  public  and  the  growing  resources  of 
the  University  may  demand  and  justify.  Thus,  it  may  imme- 
diately include  astronomy,  geology,  mineralogy,  chemistry, 
natural  philosophy,  meteorology,  civil  engineering,  the  higher 
branches  of  the  pure  mathematics,  Greek  and  Roman  letters, 
the  modern  languages  and  their  literature,  political  economy, 
international  law  and  the  history  of  philosophy;  but  it  will 
include  at  first  only  such  of  this  list  as  are  most  practical  in 
their  nature.  In  creating  this  department  the  design  should  be 
to  build  up  ultimately  a  university  in  the  largest  acceptation 
of  that  term,  and  it  is  to  be  expected  that,  in  the  progress  of 
years,  schools  of  agriculture,  of  natural  history,  of  medical 
science,  of  civil  and  political  history,  of  oriental  learning,  and 
others,  will  be  established  as  they  shall  appear  to  be  needed, 
and  that  the  existing  School  of  Law  will  be  strengthened  by 
the  addition  of  new  professorships. 

Admission  to  the  post-graduate  schools  ought  to  be  open 
only  to  Bachelors  of  Arts  and  to  persons  whose  preliminary 


FBEDERICK  A.   P.   BAKNARD  213 

training  should  be  proved  by  a  thorough  examination  to 
have  fully  qualified  them  to  enter  on  their  special  studies, 
but  the  university  should  maintain  no  preparatory  school 
except  the  regular  college  of  arts.  Students  entering  the 
post-graduate  schools,  however  or  wherever  they  might 
have  received  their  preparatory  training,  must  be  educated 
men;  they  should  be  perfectly  free  to  choose  their  own 
schools;  and  they  should  not  be  obliged  to  study  in  any 
school  against  their  will.  If  it  should  be  thought  proper 
to  confer  the  degree  of  Master  of  Arts,  that  honor  should 
be  conferred  on  those  only  who  should  have  previously 
completed  the  undergraduate  course,  and  who  should  then 
have  passed  successfully  through  a  prescribed  number  and 
variety  of  post-graduate  schools. 

The  instruction  in  post-graduate  schools  ought  to  be 
radically  different  in  method  from  undergraduate  instruc- 
tion in  the  college.  Undergraduates  are  boys  whose  imma- 
turity of  mind  and  character  has  to  be  constantly  borne  in 
mind.  Many  of  them  attend  college  merely  in  compliance 
with  the  wishes  of  their  parents,  and  with  no  clear  sense 
of  the  object  of  their  being  sent  there.  Many  are  playful, 
and  care  only  to  pass  their  time  as  pleasantly  as  possible. 
Some  are  idle.  Consequently  the  discipline  of  the  college 
must  be  so  framed  as  to  exact  at  least  a  minimum  of  men- 
tal effort  from  all,  even  the  most  reluctant,  or  mental  dis- 
cipline, which  is  the  great  purpose  of  a  college  education, 
will  not  be  secured.  Hence  the  college  course  is  neces- 
sarily laid  out  in  a  succession  of  tasks  which  the  student 
is  required  to  perform,  and  his  performance  of  the  tasks 
prescribed  is  tested  by  daily  recitations. 

Recitation  is  indispensable,  but  its  advantages  have  been 
greatly  over-rated.  It  trains  the  student  to  express  his 
ideas  of  a  given  subject  with  readiness.  He  may  learn 
from  the  recitation  of  a  fellow-student  something  that  he 


214  MEMOIKS   OF 

has  overlooked  or  misunderstood.  If  lie  makes  an  error 
in  reciting,  lie  gives  the  teacher  an  opportunity  of  correct- 
ing him  and  of  supplying  some  needed  information.  An 
acute  instructor  will  avail  himself  of  the  recitation  to  draw 
out  matters  of  interest  which  would  otherwise  escape  the 
pupil  altogether;  but  the  more  he  does  so,  the  more  he  will 
be  passing  out  of  mere  recitation  and  into  a  far  higher 
method  of  instruction.  "  For  the  purposes  of  mere  recitation 
any  man  who  is  capable  of  understanding  what  the  pupil 
says  and  of  reading  the  books  from  which  he  has  learned  it, 
so  as  to  compare  the  performance  with  the  text,  is  as  good 
and  capable  an  examiner  in  a  class-room  as  any  other." 
The  teacher  who  meets  his  classes  merely  to  hear  their 
recitations  is  not  really  a  teacher,  nor  does  he  become  so 
until  he  engrafts  upon  that  exercise  the  higher  expository 
function  of  the  lecturer;  and  just  in  proportion  as  he  rises 
to  that  higher  function  must  he  sacrifice  the  process  of  per- 
sonal investigation  which  is  the  main  object  of  the  daily 
recitations.  Class  recitations,  under  ordinary  circum- 
stances, present  this  gravely  disadvantageous  dilemma, 
that  very  few  out  of  a  large  number  of  students  can  be  ex- 
amined at  any  session,  or  else  that  so  short  a  time  must  be 
devoted  to  each  of  them  as  to  make  the  examination  merely 
formal.  Thus,  unless  the  teacher  strictly  confines  himself 
to  the  function  of  a  mere  r£p£titeur,  the  recitation,  con- 
sidered as  a  method  of  coercion,  fails  of  its  purpose.  It 
too  often  happens  that  the  teacher  does  confine  himself  to 
that  function;  his  accumulated  knowledge  is  not  applied 
to  the  elucidation  of  the  subject  in  hand,  and  he  falls  into 
a  dull  routine  in  which  he  ceases  to  be  a  living  power  and 
becomes  merely  a  questioning  machine. 

In  the  post-graduate  schools  the  method  of  formal  reci- 
tations could  have  no  place.  It  must  be  presumed  that 
students  entering  those  schools  would  be  as  anxious  to 


FREDERICK  A.    P.   BARNARD  215 

learn  as  the  teachers  to  teach,  and  hence  all  thought  of 
task-work  must  be  banished.  So  far  as  questioning  might 
be  practised,  its  object  would  not  be  to  test  the  previous 
work  of  the  student,  but  rather  to  discover  where  the 
teacher's  personal  efforts  might  be  applied  to  the  best 
advantage.  His  proper  work  would  be  to  lecture,  in  the 
sense  of  giving  oral  expositions  of  the  subject  in  hand. 
Thus  his  whole  knowledge  would  be  available,  whether 
it  were  or  were  not  contained  in  text-books  used  by  the 
student,  and  he  would  be  constantly  stimulated  to  impart 
his  personal  knowledge  to  the  class  before  him.  Books 
would  by  no  means  be  discarded.  It  would  be  the  duty 
of  the  teacher  to  refer  his  pupils  to  many  books  in  which 
they  might  find  fuller  details  of  particular  topics  than 
time  would  permit  him  to  give.  But  his  work  would  be 
to  discourse  upon  a  subject,  not  to  repeat  the  substance 
of  a  book,  and  so,  from  sheer  necessity,  he  would  be  a  true 
teacher  of  his  class.  On  many  occasions  the  method  of 
recitation  in  the  college  course  would  be  reversed;  the 
student  would  ask  questions,  and  the  teacher  would  reply. 
In  cases  which  admit  of  argument  it  would  be  of  great 
advantage  if  the  student  were  permitted  to  take  issue  with 
his  teacher  and  to  give  his  reasons  for  holding  a  different 
opinion,  because  nothing  could  afford  the  teacher  a  more 
admirable  opportunity  for  expounding  and  illustrating 
the  matter  under  consideration,  and  nothing  would  more 
surely  encourage  the  student  to  apply  his  own  faculties 
of  research  and  judgment.  In  short,  while  the  object  of 
recitations  in  college  is  to  compel  immature  boys  to  cer- 
tain efforts  which  are  necessary  to  their  mental  and  intel- 
lectual training,  the  object  of  post-graduate  instruction 
would  be  to  assist  the  voluntary  studies  of  serious  and 
earnest  men. 

Of  the  time  to  be  devoted  to  the  undergraduate  course 


216  MEMOIRS  OF 

and  to  the  schools  of  the  post-graduate  department,  Chan- 
cellor Barnard  spoke  with  some  reserve  ;  but  he  intimated 
that  the  former  might  be  advantageously  reduced.  That 
subject,  he  thought,  might  perhaps  be  properly  left  to  the 
independent  consideration  and  decision  of  the  Board  of 
Trustees  whom  he  was  addressing.  He  said 

Columbia  College,  New  York,  under  its  new  organization, 
proposes  to  confer  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts  at  the  end 
of  three  years  of  study,  and  that  of  Master  of  Arts  after  two 
years  additional.  Brown  University  has  fixed  the  course  for 
the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Philosophy  at  three  years,  while  that 
of  Bachelor  of  Arts  is  still  suffered  to  extend  to  four  years. 
In  the  University  of  Virginia  degrees  are  conferred  only  on 
proficiency,  whatever  be  the  time  of  study  required  to  secure 
the  necessary  qualification ;  but  in  that  institution  it  is  believed 
that  a  faithful  student  can  attain  the  Bachelor's  degree  in  three 
years,  and  the  Master's  in  four  or  five.  Whatever  be  the 
lengths  of  time  fixed  upon  as  proper  for  the  case  of  this  Uni- 
versity, it  is  clearly  expedient  that  proficiency,  and  not  a  deter- 
minate period  of  residence,  should  be  made  the  test  of  fitness 
for  the  honor  of  graduation,  and  that  the  proficiency  of  candi- 
dates should  not  be  a  matter  of  inference  from  the  recorded 
results  of  their  daily  performances,  —  a  criterion  which  is  fal- 
lacious in  the  extreme,  —  but  should  be  ascertained  at  the  close 
of  the  course  by  rigid  written  examinations. 

The  important  thing  at  present  was  to  draw  a  line  be- 
tween the  period  devoted  to  the  first  great  educational 
end  of  training  the  mind  and  the  second  period  devoted  to 
imparting  special  knowledge.  There  was  no  reason  why 
this  should  not  be  done,  and  until  it  should  be  done  the 
University  of  Mississippi  would  continue  to  be  nothing 
more  than  a  German  gymnasium  ;  it  would  not  be  a  true 
university. 

No  matter  what  the  original  meaning  of  the  word  "  uni- 
versity "  might  have  been  in  former  ages,  it  had  come  to 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  217 

mean  a  Universitas  Scientiarum,  a  School  of  all  Learning, 
and  to  create  such  a  university  as  the  present  age  required 
would  demand  large  expenditures,  and  therefore  a  large 
endowment.  There  were  many  colleges ;  for  lack  of 
endowments  there  could  be  few  universities.  A  seminary 
of  education  belonging  to  a  great  State  ought  to  be  fully 
equipped  and  managed  as  a  university  of  the  first  class. 
The  University  of  Mississippi  was  not  only  a  State  insti- 
tution ;  it  was  already  possessed  of  an  ample  endowment, 
and  although  some  time  might  elapse  before  it  could  reap 
all  the  benefit  of  that  endowment,  the  appropriation  made 
by  the  Legislature  to  its  support  was  sufficient  to  enable 
it  to  make  a  beginning  of  the  measures  which  were  neces- 
sary to  inaugurate  its  career  as  a  true  university.  Noth- 
ing more  important  to  the  best  interests  of  the  State  could 
be  done  than  to  foster  the  highest  education ;  yet,  while 
he  advocated  no  rash  or  precipitate  measures,  he  did  plead 
for  an  intelligent  beginning.  He  brushed  aside  the 
trivial  objection  that  "  the  plan  which  he  proposed  was  too 
large."  If  it  should  be  realized  to  the  full,  it  would  not 
be  too  large  for  its  purpose,  nor  for  the  use  and  honor  of 
the  State,  nor  would  it  be  incommensurate  with  its  endow- 
ment ;  but  what  he  was  proposing  for  the  present  was  not 
all  that  might  come  in  the  future ;  it  was  only  the  small 
beginning,  which  there  were  ample  means  to  make.  He 
repelled  the  objection  of  the  unintelligent  that  "  the  Uni- 
versity, as  it  was,  sufficed  for  the  needs  of  the  people  "  by 
retorting  that  the  demands  of  the  people  had  constrained 
the  colleges  throughout  the  country  to  attempt  the  im- 
possible, and  that  what  he  proposed  was  simply  to  organ- 
ize the  University  in  such  a  way  as  to  enable  it  to  meet 
the  just  demands  of  the  people.  He  replied  to  the  objec- 
tion of  the  ignorant  that  "  the  higher  learning  is  useless 
because  it  is  not  practical "  in  a  noble  paragraph  in  which 


218  MEMOIRS   OF 

he  maintained  the  nobility  of  knowledge  for  its  own  sake, 
independently  of  practical  utility,  and  then  proceeded  to 
show  how  largely  the  progress  of  mankind  has  been  fur- 
thered by  merely  incidental,  and  for  a  time  unnoticed, 
discoveries  of  science. 

In  every  branch  of  human  investigation  truths  may  be 
brought  to  light  which  are  merely  incidental  and  without  per- 
ceptible ulterior  importance.  The  truth  is,  that  speculations 
upon  the  value  of  any  discovery,  in  the  moment  in  which  the 
discovery  is  made,  are  totally  idle  —  are  worse  than  idle  — 
are  foolish.  The  alchemists,  in  their  indefatigable,  though 
empirical  and  blind,  researches  in  quest  of  the  philosopher's 
stone,  discovered  many  curious  compounds  which,  since  they 
availed  nothing  towards  the  production  of  gold,  were  held 
by  them  in  low  esteem ;  yet  among  these  are  some  of  those 
energetic  reagents  which,  in  the  hands  of  modern  chemistry 
and  directed  by  modern  intelligence,  have  heaped  up  gold  in 
mountains,  beyond  even  the  alchemist's  wildest  dreams,  in 
the  heart  of  every  civilized  land. 

To  descend  to  later  times,  and  to  speak  with  more  specific 
particularity,  when  Priestley,  in  1774,  turning  the  focus  of  his 
burning  lens  upon  the  substance  known  in  the  shops  of  the 
apothecaries  under  the  name  of  red  precipitate,  detached 
bubbles  of  a  gas  identical  with  that  which,  in  the  atmosphere, 
supports  life,  who  could  presume  that,  in  thus  freeing  one  of 
the  metals  from  its  companion  element,  he  had  detected  the 
composition  of  many  of  the  most  useful  ores  and  furnished 
a  hint  which  was  yet  to  reduce  all  metallurgic  art,  from  the 
smelting  of  iron  to  the  reduction  of  aluminum,  under  the 
dominion  of  chemical  science,  and  to  the  severe  rule  of  an 
intelligent  and  a  productive  economy  ?  When,  in  the  same 
year,  Scheele,  by  operating  on  the  acid  of  sea-salt,  made  first 
visible  to  human  eyes  that  beautifully  colored  gas  whose  suf- 
focating odor  is  now  so  well  known  to  all  the  world,  who 
could  foresee  the  astonishing  revolution  which  a  discovery  then 
interesting  only  for  its  curious  beauty  was  destined  to  intro- 
duce into  the  manufacture  of  paper,  of  linen  textures,  and  of 
a  vast  multitude  of  other  objects  of  daily  and  hourly  use  ? 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  219 

Or  what  imagination  could  have  been  extravagant  enough  or 
fantastic  enough  in  the  exercise  of  its  inventive  power,  to 
anticipate  that  a  substance,  for  the  moment  not  merely  use- 
less but  seemingly  noxious,  would  in  the  nineteenth  century 
accomplish  what,  without  it,  no  instrumentality  known  to 
science  or  art  could  have  accomplished,  —  find  aliment  for  the 
rapacious  maw  of  a  letter-press  whose  insatiable  demands, 
already  grown  vast  beyond  all  conception,  grow  yet  with  each 
succeeding  year  ?  When  the  chemist  of  the  last  century 
observed  the  discoloration  and  degradation  which  certain 
metallic  salts  undergo  in  the  sunlight,  who  could  possibly 
read,  in  a  circumstance  so  apparently  trivial  though  occasionally 
troublesome,  the  intimation  that  the  sun  himself  was  about  to 
place  in  the  hands  of  Niepce,  and  Daguerre,  and  Talbot,  a 
pencil  whose  magical  powers  of  delineation  should  cause  the 
highest  achievements  of  human  pictorial  art  to  seem  poor  and 
rude  in  the  comparison  ?  When  Malus,  in  1810,  watching  the 
glare  of  the  sun's  rays  reflected  from  the  windows  of  the 
Luxembourg  to  his  own,  noticed  for  the  first  time  the  curious 
phenomena  attendant  on  that  peculiar  condition  of  light  which 
has  since  been  known  by  the  name  of  polarization,  what  pre- 
science could  have  connected  a  fact  so  totally  without  any  percep- 
tible utility,  with  the  manufacture  of  sugar  in  France ;  or  have 
anticipated  that  an  instrument  founded  in  principle  on  this 
very  property  would,  forty  years  later,  effect  an  annual  saving 
to  the  French  people  to  the  extent  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
francs  ?  When  (Ersted,  in  1819,  observed  the  disturbance  of 
the  magnetic  needle  by  the  influence  of  a  neighboring  galvanic 
current,  how  wild  and  visionary  would  not  that  man  have  been 
pronounced  to  be,  who  should  have  professed  to  read  in  an 
indication  so  slight,  the  grand  truth  that  science  had  that  day 
stretched  out  the  sceptre  of  her  authority  over  a  winged  mes- 
senger, whose  fleetness  should  make  a  laggard  even  of  Oberon's 
familiar  sprite,  and  render  the  velocity  which  could  put  a 
"  girdle  round  the  earth  in  forty  minutes  "  tardy  and  unsatis- 
fying ? 

Questions  of  this  kind,  suggested  by  the  history  of  scientific 
progress,  might  be  multiplied  to  fill  a  volume.  Indeed,  it  has 
almost  come  to  be  a  dogma  in  science,  that  there  is  no  new 


220  MEMOIRS   OF 

truth  whatever,  no  matter  how  wide  a  space  may  seem  in  the 
hour  of  its  discovery  to  divide  it  from  any  connection  with  the 
material  interests  of  man,  which  carries  not  within  it  the  la- 
tent seeds  of  a  utility  which  further  discovery  in  the  same  field 
will  reveal  and  cause  to  germinate.  And  it  has  also  almost  come 
to  be  a  rule,  that  new  discoveries  in  regard  to  the  properties  of 
material  things,  or  the  laws  that  govern  them,  shall  belong 
to  the  class  of  seemingly  useless  truths.  A  new  truth,  though 
in  its  bosom  may  lie  buried  the  germ  of  a  wealth  to  which  all 
the  gold  of  California  would  be  but  as  the  light  dust  of  the 
balance,  may  yet  for  years  occupy  in  men's  estimations 
no  higher  a  place  than  that  of  a  fact  of  curious  knowledge ; 
even  as  the  priceless  diamond  in  the  cottage  of  the  fisher- 
man of  the  Eastern  tale  was  esteemed  capable  of  being  turned 
to  no  better  account  than  to  serve  as  a  plaything  for  children. 
Not  even  useful  truth  is  useful  until  it  is  known  to  be  so,  and 
until  it  is  known  how  it  is  to  be  so.  And  no  matter  how 
numerous  and  multiform  may  be  the  facts  which  the  armies  of 
science  may  sweep  together  as  their  spoil,  and  no  matter 
what  infinity  of  benefit  to  man  may  be  hidden  among  the  rich 
booty  —  all  this  availeth  nothing  to  the  world  which  it  so 
deeply  concerns,  until,  by  patient  experiment,  endlessly  varied 
and  feeling  its  way  cautiously  in  the  obscurity,  it  has  been  made 
manifest  to  what  useful  ends  the  result  of  the  conquest  may 
be  applied.  Thus,  when  Volta,  by  piling  up  bits  of  metal  and 
moistened  cardboard,  one  upon  another,  succeeded  in  produc- 
ing a  feeble  disturbance  of  electrical  equilibrium,  he  discovered, 
as  early  as  the  year  1800,  a  truth  pregnant  with  consequences 
of  incalculable  moment  to  science,  and  destined  to  contribute 
more  to  human  comfort  and  the  wealth  of  nations,  than  the 
discovery  of  a  dozen  Californias.  Yet  several  years  elapsed 
before,  in  the  hands  of  Davy,  the  wonderful  fertility  of  this 
great  germ-truth  even  began  to  be  revealed  ;  and  still,  at  this 
very  day,  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  half  a  century,  after 
a  long  series  of  illustrious  investigators  have  added  their 
labors  to  his,  —  after  the  inventive  genius  of  a  Hare,  and  a  Wol- 
laston,  and  a  Daniell,  and  a  Grove,  and  a  Bunsen  have  been 
successively  employed  in  exalting  the  energy  of  the  combina- 
tions, and  the  intelligent  sagacity  of  an  Ampere,  an  Arago,  a 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD  221 

Henry,  a  De  la  Rive,  and  a  Faraday,  has  been  opening  out  to 
view  a  brilliant  array  of  resultant  truths  ;  when  all  things  in 
earth  and  air  and  sea  have  yielded  to  this  next  to  miraculous 
power  the  secret  of  their  composition ;  when  the  obdurate 
puzzle  of  the  earth's  magnetism  has  melted  away  before 
it;  when  a  network  of  electric  wires  has  annihilated  the 
breadth  of  continents,  and  the  two  mightiest  nations  of  the 
earth  are  preparing  to  stretch  out  the  line  which  links  thought 
with  thought,  from  shore  to  shore  of  the  ocean  itself,  —  even 
now,  the  progressive  development  of  the  great  germ  truth  is 
still  unchecked,  and  the  world  is  full  of  laborers  exploring, 
with  unabated  zeal,  the  field  first  opened  to  their  research 
by  the  intelligent  observation  and  appreciative  genius  of  Volta. 
If  it  is  difficult,  then,  for  philosophers  themselves  to  judge, 
in  the  first  moments  of  discovery,  in  what  precise  form,  and 
through  what  precise  practical  application,  any  new  truth  may 
become  palpably  useful  to  man,  how  much  more  so  must  it  be 
for  the  multitude  who  are  not  philosophers !  And  if  it  has 
happened  in  instances  which  defy  enumeration  that  the  insig- 
nificant truth  of  to-day  has  been  exalted  to  a  position  of  the 
highest  dignity  to-morrow,  how  shall  we  venture  to  say  of 
any  known  fact  of  science,  however  it  may  surpass  our  present 
penetration  to  discover  any  connection,  immediate  or  remote, 
between  it  and  the  increase  of  human  wealth  or  comfort,  that 
it  is  a  useless  fact,  or  that  the  labor  which  may  have  been 
expended  in  bringing  it  to  light  has  been  thrown  away  ? 

This  eloquent  vindication  of  the  utility  of  scientific  re- 
search was  not  written  without  a  practical  purpose,  nor 
merely  for  the  purpose  it  seemed  to  have  in  view.  Bar- 
nard had  set  his  heart  on  securing  for  the  University  at 
the  earliest  possible  moment  a  modest  astronomical  obser- 
vatory, to  be  paid  for  out  of  the  appropriation  which  had 
been  made  by  the  Legislature,  and  so  to  make  a  begin- 
ning of  that  higher  scientific  research  for  which  he  hoped 
that  the  University  might  yet  be  famous.  He  had 
already  sufficient  apparatus  for  all  the  other  departments 
which  he  could  hope  to  establish  for  years  to  come,  and  the 


222  MEMOIRS   OF 

objection  of  immediate  imitility  was  precisely  the  objec- 
tion which  could  be  most  easily  maintained  against  ad- 
vanced astronomical  studies.  His  vindication  of  scien- 
tific studies  in  general  was  therefore  meant  chiefly  as 
an  introduction  to  a  similar  vindication  of  astronomical 
studies  in  particular,  by  which  he  might  anticipate  objec- 
tions to  the  establishment  of  an  observatory. 

The  science  of  astronomy  is  that  which  seems  to  the  view 
of  most  men  at  the  present  day  to  occupy  itself,  more  than  any 
other,  with  laborious  trifling.  Not  that  the  uses  of  astronomy 
in  general  are  altogether  denied.  Most  persons  know  that 
astronomy  has  something  to  do,  in  some  way  or  other,  with 
navigation;  and  nobody  need  be  told  that  navigation  has 
something  to  do  with  commerce,  or  commerce  with  human 
wealth.  But  the  idea  seems  to  be  generally  prevalent,  that 
all  the  service  which  astronomy  can  render  to  navigation  has 
been  rendered  long  ago,  and  that  observers  are  now  idly  gaz- 
ing up  into  the  skies  for  the  gratification  of  a  transcendentally 
refined  curiosity.  It  is  true,  notwithstanding,  that  astronomy 
is  still  too  far  short  of  the  point  of  perfection  to  assign  the 
place  of  a  ship  on  the  ocean  within  a  narrower  limit  of  error 
than  three  or  four  miles. 

As  early  as  1598,  Philip  III.,  of  Spain,  offered  a  reward  of 
one  thousand  crowns  to  the  person  who  should  solve  the  prob- 
lem. The  Dutch  States  shortly  after  followed  with  au  offer 
of  ten  thousand  florins.  lu  1714,  the  British  Parliament  pro- 
posed the  magnificent  prize  of  twenty  thousand  pounds  to  any 
oue  who  should  furnish  a  method  by  which  longitude  on  the 
ocean  could  be  ascertained  within  thirty  geographical  miles. 
The  same  body  offered  also  the  lesser  reward  of  fifteen  thou- 
sand pounds  for  a  method  which  should  be  correct  withiu 
forty  miles ;  aud  ten  thousand  for  one  true  only  within  sixty. 
In  1716,  France,  under  the  regency  of  the  Duke  of  Orleans, 
offered,  to  the  same  end,  a  prize  of  one  hundred  thousand 
livres.  But  no  really  important  results  were  ever  arrived  at 
until  after  the  establishment  of  regular  astronomical  observa- 
tories. When,  in  1674,  St.  Pierre,  a  French  competitor  for  the 
prize  offered  by  Parliament,  presented  to  the  court  of  Charles 


FREDERICK  A.    P.   BARNARD  223 

II.  an  astronomical  method  for  the  determination  of  the  longi- 
tude, no  better  tables  of  the  heavenly  bodies  existed  than  those 
of  Tycho  Brahe.  The  commissioners  appointed  to  examine 
St.  Pierre's  claim  applied  for  advice  to  Mamsteed,  then  the 
most  eminent  of  British  astronomers.  He  replied  that  the 
method  was  valueless,  on  account  of  the  errors  of  the  tables ; 
and  that  every  astronomical  method  must  be  equally  so,  unless 
the  places  of  the  heavenly  bodies  should  be  observed  anew. 
It  is  said  that  Charles,  on  reading  this  letter,  exclaimed  im- 
pulsively, "  But  I  must  have  them  observed ! "  and  these 
words  from  the  lips  of  royalty  laid  the  foundation  of  the 
Observatory  at  Greenwich.  That  single  institution  has  done 
more  for  the  increase  of  the  world's  wealth  than  would  have 
sufficed  to  support  at  their  ease  all  the  astronomers  and  physi- 
cists that  ever  lived  since  the  days  of  Hipparchus ;  to  build 
and  furnish  all  the  observatories  the  world  ever  saw;  to 
establish  and  endow  all  the  universities,  colleges,  and  schools, 
of  every  grade  from  highest  to  lowest,  throughout  the  globe ; 
to  erect  and  provide  for  all  the  hospitals,  almshouses,  and 
eleemosynary  institutions  of  every  kind,  in  all  civilized  lands ; 
and  to  build  all  the  churches  and  parsonages,  as  well  as  defray 
all  other  expenses  attendant  on  the  support  of  religion,  in 
every  Christian  country,  from  the  advent  of  our  blessed 
Saviour  down  to  the  present  hour.  We  need  not  hesitate  to 
assert  that  the  observatories  of  Europe,  beginning  with  those 
of  Greenwich  and  Paris  in  the  seventeenth  century,  have  done 
more  in  widening  the  scope  of  the  world's  commercial  opera- 
tions, and  quickening  the  energy  which  has  pervaded  and 
filled  them  everywhere  with  activity,  than  all  other  influences 
put  together  —  than  the  temptation  to  human  cupidity  offered 
from  all  antiquity  in  the  fabled  wealth  of  India,  Cathay,  and 
the  Islands  of  Spices  —  than  the  intoxication  with  which  the 
world  of  the  sixteenth  century  ran  mad  over  the  metallic 
treasures  of  the  two  Americas  —  than  all  the  stimulus  applied 
by  interested  governments,  in  the  form  of  favoring  legislation, 
grants  of  monopolies  and  the  investment  of  trading  companies 
with  exclusive  rights  and  privileges  —  than  all  the  improve- 
ments of  naval  architecture,  increasing  the  strength,  the  sta- 
bility, the  capacity,  and  the  speed  of  sea-going  vessels  —  than 


224  MEMOIKS   OF 

all  the  discoveries  in  marine  geography,  disclosing  the  hidden 
dangers  of  the  ocean's  bed  and  the  insidious  currents  of  its 
surface  —  than  all  the  progress  made  in  studying  the  laws 
which  govern  the  winds,  their  direction,  their  violence  and 
their  fluctuations  —  than  the  upspringing  and  growth  to  great- 
ness of  colonies  upon  wild  and  untenanted  shores  —  than  the 
simultaneous  enlargement  of  the  material  by  the  discovery  of 
new  articles  adapted  to  the  uses  of  man,  or  the  application  of 
articles  of  ancient  knowledge  to  new  uses — than  the  enlarge- 
ment of  human  wants  through  the  facility  with  which  the 
simpler  wants  of  the  earlier  centuries  are  supplied  in  the 
later — than  the  enlargement  of  human  wealth  itself,  which 
tends  ever  through  commercial  enterprise  to  enlarge  itself 
still  more  —  than,  finally,  the  great  improvement  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  the  invocation  of  the  powerful  arm  of  steam 
to  the  propulsion  of  the  mercantile  marine,  securing  a  rapidity 
and  a  definite  duration  of  transit  on  the  longest  voyages 
which  are  next  in  value  to  wealth,  itself. 

This  great  benefit  conferred  by  astronomy  upon  commerce, 
and  through  commerce  upon  the  world's  wealth,  has  resulted 
from  the  operation  of  a  very  simple  principle.  In  whatever 
human  enterprises  wealth  is  set  at  hazard,  the  ventures  will  be 
greater  in  proportion  as  the  hazard  is  less.  It  is  conceivable 
that  the  dangers  of  the  ocean  might  be  so  great  as  to  arrest 
transmarine  commerce  altogether.  It  is  also  conceivable  that 
they  might  be  totally  annihilated.  Between  the  extremes, 
commerce  would  assume  every  intermediate  aspect  of  vitality 
and  freedom,  from  vigorous  life  down  to  absolute  torpidity. 
Now,  among  the  Athenians,  according  to  Say,  marine  insur- 
ance bore  the  extravagant  rate  of  sixty  per  cent  per  annum,  or 
thirty  per  cent  per  voyage  on  the  total  value  insured.  Say 
supposes  this  extraordinary  fact  to  be  in  part  attributable  to 
the  barbarous  habits  of  the  people  with  whom  the  Athenians 
traded  —  a  supposition  apparently  quite  gratuitous,  since  no 
producing  people  is  hostile  to  commerce,  and  no  non-producing 
people  is  worth  trading  with.  But  he  attributes  it  also,  with 
greater  justice,  to  the  dangers  of  navigation,  and  adds  this  sig- 
nificant remark:  "There  was  more  danger  [to  the  Athenian 
merchant-sailors]  in  a  voyage  from  the  Piraeus  to  Trapezus, 


FREDERICK   A.   P.   BARNARD  225 

though  but  three  hundred  leagues  distant,  than  there  is  now 
[1826]  in  one  from  L'Orient  to  China,  which  is  a  distance  of 
seven  thousand."  This  statement  alone  is  sufficient  to  show 
that  the  reduction  of  marine  dangers  in  modern  times  —  a  re- 
duction mainly  due  to  astronomy  —  has  been  sufficient,  ten 
times  over,  to  stimulate  into  vigor  a  struggling  trade;  and 
hence  that  that  rich  Oriental  commerce  which  lived  and  nour- 
ished, and  in  the  hands  of  the  Venetians,  and  the  Portuguese, 
and  the  Dutch,  poured  wealth  into  Europe,  in  spite  of  the  in- 
definite perils  and  perpetual  losses  of  the  tedious  voyage  by 
the  Cape,  during  which  the  capital  lay  a  dead  investment  — 
that  commerce  which  enriched  its  possessors,  must,  under  the 
almost  boundless  development  given  to  it  by  the  favoring  cir- 
cumstances of  modern  times,  have  contributed  to  the  world's 
wealth  to  an  extent  which  no  figures  can  compute. 

The  condition  of  the  astronomical  tables  at  the  founding  of 
the  Eoyal  Observatory  was  such  that  they  could  not  by  any 
possibility  be  made  the  basis  of  a  method  of  practical  naviga- 
tion, since  the  place  of  a  ship  as  determined  by  them,  might 
possibly  be  in  error  to  the  enormous  extent  of  nine  hundred 
miles ;  nor  was  it  in  the  power  of  any  correction  practicable 
without  new  and  laborious  observation,  to  reduce  this  limit  of 
error  to  less  than  one-fourth  of  its  amount,  or  nearly  two  hun- 
dred miles.  On  the  establishment  of  observatories,  the  first 
and  largest  steps  toward  improvement  were  comparatively 
rapid  and  easy ;  the  more  recent  have,  on  the  contrary,  been 
slow  and  difficult.  In  the  lifetime  of  the  first  public  astrono- 
mers the  outline  of  a  satisfactory  method  of  navigation  by  the 
stars  still  failed  to  appear.  The  moon,  "  the  inconstant  moon," 
had  still  to  be  watched  through  many  a  weary  revolution. 
Not  till  near  the  close  of  that  long  period,  had  astronomy  pre- 
sented to  the  world  a  method  of  ocean  longitude,  within  the 
outside  limits  specified  by  the  parliamentary  act  of  1714.  If, 
then,  to  make  but  a  modest  approach  toward  theoretic  perfec- 
tion, when  practical  astronomy  was  yet  on  every  side  open  to 
easy  improvement  by  the  first  comers,  was  a  labor  arduous  and 
slow,  what  must  have  since  been,  what  must  yet  continue  to  be, 
the  toilsomeness  of  the  task  of  working  out  its  still  higher  im- 
provement, and  carrying  it  onward  toward  that  standard  of 

Q 


226  MEMOIRS   OF 

ideal  perfection  which  science  will  continue  to  approximate 
while  the  world  stands,  but,  after  all,  will  never  fully  attain. 

Having  thus  shown  the  immense  utility  of  astronomy  to 
the  commerce  of  the  world,  the  Letter  proceeded  to  show 
how  the  prosecution  of  astronomical  studies  had  led  to 
an  improvement  in  methods  of  mathematical  calculation 
which  must  ultimately  prove  to  be  of  inestimable  value 
in  every  department  of  exact  science. 

The  fact  that  the  observations  of  to-night  cannot  be  turned 
to  immediate  account  to-morrow  morning,  but  that  the  accumu- 
lated results  of  many  observations  are  necessary  to  a  single 
additional  step  of  progress,  is  one  which  places  the  science  at  a 
great  disadvantage,  when  its  claims  are  canvassed  in  the  world. 
The  incidental  facts  of  discovery  which  are  of  a  nature  to  be 
generally  understood,  though  they  illustrate  in  no  manner  the 
great  and  proper  labors  of  these  useful  men,  are  often  seized 
upon  by  those  who  depreciate  the  value  of  astronomical  re- 
search, as  if  they  were  the  objects  and  ends  of  astronomy.  A 
telescopic  comet  is  announced,  and  the  discoverer  is  rewarded, 
perhaps,  by  a  royal  medal.  Now,  What  of  this  comet?  says 
the  objector,  and,  How  is  the  world  the  better  for  its  discovery  ? 
Well,  for  the  present,  we  freely  admit  that  we  shall  sleep  no 
warmer  in  our  beds,  nor  wake  any  richer  in  the  morning,  on 
account  of  it.  Yet  the  reward  is  a  just  reward  for  vigilance, 
and  vigilance  certainly  is  valuable.  Experience  has,  moreover, 
shown  that  the  observation  even  of  comets  has  no  slight  inter- 
est in  its  relations  to  the  theory  of  gravitation,  to  the  physi- 
cal condition  of  the  realms  of  space,  and  to  the  permanence  of 
the  system  to  which  we  belong.  But  let  the  comet  go ;  class  it 
with  the  Antarctic  continent  discovery  by  Wilkes,  or  with  the 
boomerang  of  his  Feejee  islanders.  We  are  not  happier  or  less 
happy  for  the  one  or  for  the  other ;  yet  the  Antarctic  continent 
is,  after  all,  a  great  fact;  and  the  boomerang  is  a  small  one 
which  there  was'  surely  no  harm  in  recording. 

The  objector  sometimes,  however,  unconsciously  founds  his 
strictures  upon  discoveries  which  are  not  trifles.  The  under- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  227 

signed  had  heard  the  question  gravely  raised,  What  advantage 
has  the  world  derived  from  the  discovery  of  the  planet  Uranus  ? 
The  fact,  remarks  the  objector,  is  called  an  important  one;  and 
yet  mankind  had  got  along  very  well  without  it.  Now  man- 
kind got  along  well  enough  for  a  time  without  buttons  and 
without  breeches ;  and  much  longer  without  the  printing  press, 
and  without  the  steam-engine.  Mankind  felt  no  need  of  can- 
non when  there  was  no  gunpowder,  nor  of  telegraph  posts 
when  there  was  no  galvanism.  Mankind  got  along  very  well 
without  Uranus,  and  could  have  got  on  much  longer  under 
the  same  privation,  had  not  Uranus  been  discovered.  But  to 
say  that  the  discovery  has  been  of  no  use,  —  this  is  an  admis- 
sion which  we  are  not  prepared  to  make.  It  has  been  of  use, 
as  may  be  easily  illustrated. 

First,  however,  let  attention  be  drawn  to  an  analogous  dis- 
covery of  somewhat  later  date,  the  history  of  which  is  both 
curious  and  instructive  and  may  best  precede  what  relates  to 
Uranus.  On  the  first  day  of  January,  1801,  the  very  first  day 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  distinguished  astronomer,  Piazzi, 
of  Palermo,  observed  a  minute  planet,  never  before  noticed  by 
human  eye,  since  known  by  the  name  of  Ceres.  Compared 
with  Uranus  it  is  but  a  sand-grain  to  a  mountain.  Compared 
even  with  our  moon,  it  is  but  an  insignificant  globule  —  a 
pepper-corn  to  an  orange.  Yet  its  discovery  had  a  value. 
Piazzi  silently  observed  it,  designing,  so  soon  as  he  should 
have  satisfactorily  determined  its  orbit,  to  surprise  the  world 
by  the  announcement  of  a  new  member  of  the  solar  system ; 
but  it  soon  plunged  into  the  overwhelming  blaze  of  the  solar 
radiance,  and  was  lost  to  view  for  months.  Unable,  from  the 
few  observations  he  had  gathered,  to  determine  the  path  of 
the  stranger,  Piazzi  at  length  laid  the  observations  themselves 
before  the  astronomical  world.  The  period  of  the  probable 
emergence  of  the  body  from  its  veil  of  light  having  arrived, 
innumerable  telescopes  were  directed  toward  the  region  of  the 
heavens  in  which  its  track  was  presumed  to  lie;  but  not  all 
the  scrutiny  nor  all  the  perseverance  of  all  the  astronomers  of 
Europe  could  suffice  to  recover  the  lost  planet  again  to  human 
view.  Gradually  a  suspicion  began  to  be  whispered  that  the 
pretended  discovery  was  no  discovery  at  all ;  but  that  Piazzi 


228  MEMOIKS   OF 

had  fabricated  the  observations  with  the  malicious  design  to 
puzzle  and  annoy  his  contemporaries. 

Now,  at  about  this  very  period,  a  mathematician  of  Ger- 
many had  had  his  thoughts  turned  toward  a  defect  in  the 
existing  state  of  astronomical  science,  in  regard  to  the  deter- 
mination of  planetary  paths.  While  this  defect  continued,  it 
was  impossible  to  test  the  question  whether  the  observations 
were  genuine  or  not.  The  occasion  stimulated  him  to  supply 
the  defect;  and  the  result,  the  TJieoria  Motus  Corporum 
Coelestium  of  Gauss,  was  one  of  the  most  valuable  contribu- 
tions to  mathematical  science  ever  made.  By  the  aid  of  the 
Theoria  Motus  the  path  of  the  planet  Ceres  was  traced 
from  the  time  when  it  escaped  from  the  hands  of  Piazzi. 
Gauss  said  to  the  astronomers,  "Look  yonder,  and  you  will 
find  your  truant  star."  They  looked,  and  the  little  globule 
was  recovered  on  the  first  clear  night  thereafter. 

Now,  what  the  planet  Ceres  did  for  the  world  was  to  im- 
prove mathematical  science  —  the  science  whose  useful  appli- 
cations on  the  earth  are  infinitely  varied,  and  without  which 
all  our  knowledge  of  the  heavens  derived  from  mere  observa- 
tion would  be  of  no  value  whatever,  either  to  navigation  or 
to  any  other  end.  And  what  the  planet  Ceres  did,  that  the 
planet  Uranus  has  done  in  a  different  manner. 

From  an  early  period  following  its  discovery,  this  planet 
had  been  a  very  burden  upon  the  patience  of  astronomers, 
and  a  sore  trial  to  their  faith.  From  its  motions  as  actually 
observed,  its  prospective  motions,  as  they  ought  to  be,  were 
deduced  by  computation,  and  its  path  was  prescribed  to  it 
with  a  confidence  which  the  tested  power  of  physical  astron- 
omy had  rendered  somewhat  strongly  assured.  But  Uranus 
seemed  very  little  to  heed  the  dictates  of  the  astronomers, 
and  the  path  which  they  assigned  him  was  one  in  which  he 
chose  not  to  walk.  Moreover,  after  his  discovery,  the  fact 
presented  itself  that  he  had  already  been  observed  nineteen 
times  before,  without  being  recognized  as  a  planet —  once  so 
long  before  as  1690;  and  that  when  the  positions  which  he 
occupied  at  the  times  of  those  ancient  observations  were  com- 
pared with  what  they  should  have  been  according  to  the  law 
of  his  later  motion,  there  was  a  disagreement  to  an  extent  so 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  229 

large  as  to  make  it  impossible  to  assign  any  path  whatever 
to  this  contumacious  planet,  so  as  to  recognize  the  theory  of 
gravitation,  and  harmonize  the  old  observations  with  the  new. 
Here  was  a  case  of  real  perplexity.  It  raised  the  question 
whether  the  law  of  gravitation  is,  after  all,  a  law  which  can  be 
universally  relied  on.  Evidently  the  decision  must  go  against 
the  law,  unless  it  could  be  shown  that  some  disturbing  body, 
heretofore  overlooked,  existed  within  the  limits  of  the  sys- 
tem, and  of  which  nothing  was  known  except  in  the  seeming 
caprices  of  Uranus.  The  data  on  which  to  proceed  were  evi- 
dently much  slighter  than  when  Gauss  attacked  the  problem 
of  Ceres.  Ceres  had  been  seen;  the  unknown  disturber  of 
Uranus,  never.  But  as  if  to  illustrate  the  truth  that,  as  diffi- 
culties accumulate,  human  energies  correspondingly  rise  to 
their  encounter,  it  was  not  a  single  champion  who  rushed 
forward  to  the  support  of  troubled  science;  two  simultane- 
ously, with  equal  enthusiasm,  equal  perseverance,  and  equal 
final  success,  attacked  the  difficulty,  and  bore  off  the  plaudits 
of  the  world.  Leverrier  wrote  to  his  friend  at  Berlin,  "  Ex- 
amine the  point  I  describe,  and  you  will  find  the  disturber." 
Galle  turned  his  telescope  in  that  direction,  and  in  the  self- 
same hour,  Neptune  was  found.  Simultaneously,  Adams  laid 
his  finger  on  the  map  of  the  heavens,  and  said  to  the  astron- 
omer of  Cambridge,  "  It  is  in  this  lurking-place  precisely  that 
you  will  find  the  author  of  all  our  confusion."  The  astrono- 
mer Challis,  distrusting  isolated  observations,  commenced  a 
systematic  sweep  of  the  whole  region.  He  saw  and  recorded 
the  planet  twice  without  knowing  it,  and  failed  to  make  the 
discovery  simply  because  he  deferred  the  comparison  of  his 
observations  until  too  late.  Thus,  the  benefit  which  has  re- 
sulted to  the  world  from  the  discovery  of  Uranus  is  analogous 
to  that  of  which  Ceres  was  the  occasion:  it  has  wonderfully 
stimulated  ingenuity  in  the  improvement  of  mathematical 
methods  and  has  thus  contributed  to  the  advancement  of  that 
science  without  which  no  other  exact  science  can  exist. 

Why  should  the  State  of  Mississippi  participate  in  edu- 
cational measures  by  which  the  science  of  the  world  is 
enriched  ?  Why  should  not  such  pursuits  be  left  to  older 


230  MEMOIRS   OF 

communities?  In  answering  these  questions  the  Letter 
addressed  not  only  the  reason  of  the  people  of  the  State, 
but  also  their  State  pride.  He  observed  that,  for  want 
of  institutions  devoted  to  the  higher  studies,  native  tal- 
ent would  lack  its  necessary  stimulus.  It  was  true  that, 
when  once  aroused,  talent  would  find  ample  opportunity 
for  education  and  exercise  elsewhere ;  but  without  home 
institutions  the  likelihood  was  that  it  would  never  be 
aroused  to  energetic  activity.  The  number  who  might 
be  induced  to  enter  on  advanced  studies  through  the 
influence  of  such  institutions  might  be  few,  but  their 
value  to  the  State  might  be  inestimably  large.  More- 
over, it  was  universally  conceded  at  the  South  that 
Southern  youth  ought  to  be  educated  at  home.  The 
Southern  sentiment  on  that  point  was  right,  and  it  would 
be  right  even  if  the  South  had  no  peculiar  interests  to 
make  home  education  especially  important.  Yet  the  fact 
was  that  the  flower  of  the  Southern  youth  was  still  sent 
to  be  educated  at  Northern  schools.  The  excellence  of 
Southern  schools  was  universally  extolled ;  indeed,  the 
praise  bestowed  upon  them  was  so  excessive  and  so  indis- 
criminate as  to  check  the  spirit  of  improvement  by  pro- 
ducing in  their  managers  a  contented  faith  in  their  own 
merits  which  was  not  by  any  means  well  founded;  but 
the  true  opinion  of  educated  and  intelligent  parents  was 
quite  practically  shown  by  the  simple  fact  that  they  did 
not  send  their  sons  to  the  institutions  of  the  South, 
but  to  Northern  institutions.  Moreover,  the  judgment 
of  such  parents  was  amply  justified;  for,  unless  the 
enlightened  course  of  the  Trustees  of  the  University 
of  Mississippi  had  made  it  an  exception,  "  no  institu- 
tion of  learning  in  all  the  South  could  justly  claim  for 
itself  an  undeniable  equality  of  merit  with  any  one  of 
the  older  colleges  of  the  North,  and  much  less  could  any 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  231 

Southern  institution  justly  arrogate  to  itself  superlatives 
of  praise." 

But  the  excellences  of  an  educational  institution  must  be 
caused  by  three  things,  —  the  personal  ability  of  teachers, 
the  methods  of  instruction,  and  the  material  appliances 
provided  for  imparting  instruction.  The  first  and  second 
of  these  elements  of  excellence  might  be  dismissed  in  a 
comparison  of  Southern  with  Northern  schools,  because 
the  Southern  teachers  were  in  many  instances  men  of 
undoubted  ability,  and  the  methods  of  instruction  were 
the  same  in  both  sections  of  the  country.  The  difference 
must  therefore  be  sought  in  the  defect,  at  the  South,  of  the 
means  and  appliances  which  are  necessary  as  auxiliaries 
to  the  highest  instruction,  and  the  remedy  for  that  defect 
would  be  found  in  supplying  what  was  needed,  not  in 
denouncing  any  one  for  observing  its  effects,  nor,  as- 
suredly, in  denying  that  the  defect  existed.  The  Trus- 
tees of  the  University  of  Mississippi  at  a  meeting  in  1856, 
had  unanimously  accepted  the  correctness  of  the  principle 
that  whatever  attractions,  and  of  whatever  kind,  might  be 
operating  to  draw  the  youth  of  Mississippi  to  institutions 
of  learning  beyond  the  State,  the  same  attractions  ought 
to  be  created  at  the  University  of  Mississippi.  Much  had 
been  done  to  carry  out  that  principle.  The  philosophical 
apparatus  was  unsurpassed  by  that  of  any  institution  on 
the  continent,  and  in  some  respects  it  was  unequalled  ; 
its  mineral  collections  were  unrivalled  except  in  the  rich- 
est cabinets  of  the  country;  in  conchology  it  had  a 
treasure  which  no  other  institution  could  approach. 
Astronomy  was  still  deficient  in  the  necessary  apparatus 
and  appliances;  and  yet  the  aid  of  the  University  had 
already  been  sought  by  the  authorities  of  the  United 
States  in  making  observations  which  were  to  be  simul- 
taneously made  in  other  institutions,  and  in  the  results  of 


232  MEMOIRS   OF 

which  the  whole  world  was  interested.  The  very  fact 
that  the  University  of  Mississippi  was  so  recognized  was 
a  valuable  distinction,  and  if  the  invitation  were  accepted, 
the  reputation  of  the  University  would  be  instantly  en- 
hanced, since  it  would  at  once  take  rank  with  institutions 
of  the  highest  scientific  distinction  throughout  the  world. 
The  effect  which  such  a  reputation  must  immediately 
have  on  the  prosperity  of  the  University  could  not  be 
doubtful.  The  State  itself  would  gain  in  reputation 
before  the  world,  as  an  enlightened  community,  and  it 
would  deserve  its  reputation,  because  in  promoting  letters 
and  science  it  would  be  using  means  which  the  history  of 
mankind  has  shown  to  be  universally  efficient  in  making 
the  people  of  any  community  happier  and  better.  Not 
only  would  the  higher  learning  be  advanced,  but  prepara- 
tory schools  would  be  constrained  to  advance  in  like 
measure,  and  so  a  class  of  competent  teachers  would  be 
raised  up  to  supply  satisfactory  instruction  in  the  com- 
mon schools.  In  short,  there  was  no  great  interest  of  the 
people  of  the  State  which  would  not,  in  time,  be  directly 
or  indirectly  promoted  by  the  advance  of  the  State  Uni- 
versity to  the  point  of  excellence  which  such  an  institu- 
tion ought  to  endeavor  to  attain. 

If  it  was  objected  that  the  State  was  still  too  new,  and 
that  its  wealth  was  not  yet  sufficiently  large,  for  such 
undertakings  as  were  now  proposed  the  answer  was  a  cate- 
gorical denial  of  the  statement.  In  the  sense  of  a  political 
organization,  the  State  of  Mississippi  was  new  indeed, 
but  only  in  that  sense.  The  people  of  Mississippi  were 
not  beginners  in  the  duties  or  habits  of  citizenship.  They 
had  been  trained  to  the  life  of  citizens  from  their  birth,  and 
all  that  was  asked  of  them  was  to  do  as  their  fathers  had 
done,  and  as  they  themselves  would  have  done  elsewhere. 
Their  wealth  was  ample  for  all  that  was  proposed,  and  the 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD 

wealth  of  the  State  was  constantly  increasing,  but  even 
that  wealth  need  be  drawn  upon  to  only  a  small  extent 
and  for  a  limited  time,  until  the  endowment  of  the  Uni- 
versity should  be  made  available  for  the  purposes  for 
which  the  State  had  received  it,  and  to  which  the  consti- 
tution of  the  State  required  it  to  be  applied.  The  great- 
ness of  a  State  consists,  not  in  mere  wealth,  but  in  the 
moral  and  intellectual  enlightenment  of  its  people  ;  and 
the  glory  of  a  great  and  wealthy  State  consists  in  so  using 
its  wealth  as  to  minister  to  these  ends.  Noble  institu- 
tions of  learning  are  evidences  of  the  true  greatness  of 
a  State.  "What  are  structures  of  polished  marble  or 
ponderous  granite  compared  with  the  majestic  creations 
of  the  intellect?  And  what  though  it  be  given  to  a  few 
to  assist  personally  in  lifting  to  a  loftier  and  still  loftier 
height  the  proud  temple  which  successive  generations  have 
reared  to  science  in  the  midst  of  the  nations,  surely  no 
one  can  be  insensible  to  the  sublimity  of  an  edifice  whose 
foundations  are  as  broad  as  the  foundations  of  the  earth 
and  whose  vaulted  dome  is  studded  with  the  stars  of 
heaven ! " 


234  MEMOIRS  OF 


CHAPTER  X 

Effect  of  Barnard's  Letter  to  the  Trustees  —  Two  years  of  progress  — 
Barnard  and  the  University  of  the  South  —  Discouragement  —  Report 
to  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science  on  the 
Coast  Survey  of  the  United  States  —  The  astronomical  observatory  and 
its  telescope  —  A  petty  persecution — A  case  of  discipline  —  Charges 
against  Barnard  of  unsoundness  on  the  slavery  question  —  His  defence 
and  acquittal  —  Barnard's  views  on  slavery  —  A  Union  man  at  the 
South  —  Thanksgiving  discourse  in  1856  —  A  letter  from  Jacob  Thomp- 
son—  A  meeting  with  Jefferson  Davis  —  The  astronomical  expedition 
to  Labrador  —  Barnard  is  elected  president  of  the  American  Associa- 
tion for  the  Advancement  of  Science. 

CHANCELLOR  BARNARD'S  Letter  to  the  Board  of  Trus- 
tees of  the  University  was  read  with  interest  and  sat- 
isfaction far  beyond  the  borders  of  Mississippi.  He 
received  from  many  eminent  men  hearty  congratulations 
on  the  service  he  had  done  to  education.  From  Dr. 
Orville  Dewey,  a  native,  like  himself,  of  Sheffield,  he 
had  a  commendation  which  particularly  gratified  him. 

I  have  read  your  Letter  [said  Dr.  Dewey]  throughout  with 
interest,  and  the  arguments  for  astronomy  with  more  than 
interest  —  with  a  sort  of  triumph,  as  the  cumulative  statements 
swelled  up  in  a  grand  heap.  Instead  of  praising  you,  which 
I  have  hardly  a  right  to  do,  I  will  tell  you  a  tell  from  one  who 
has.  Dr.  Walker  said  to  me  that  you  had  written  better  on 
university  education  than  any  other  mau  in  this  country. 

At  home  he  was  rewarded  with  more  success  than 
he  had  hoped  for.  Though  the  Trustees  could  not  ex- 
pect that  Barnard's  proposals,  in  their  larger  sense,  were 
likely  to  be  realized  for  many  years,  they  set  honestly 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  235 

and  vigorously  about  the  work  in  behalf  of  which  he 
had  invoked  their  immediate  efforts.  Yet  he  had  to 
encounter  all  the  difficulties  and  discouragements  which 
reformers  must  expect  from  mere  unintelligence  in  coad- 
jutors who  are  heartily  in  sympathy  with  them,  but  who 
do  not,  and  can  not,  fully  understand  their  whole  mind. 
He  had  this  additional  difficulty,  that  at  every  step  it 
was  necessary  to  carry  the  public,  and  so  to  carry  the 
Legislature,  with  him,  as  well  as  the  Trustees.  It  would 
be  idle  to  deny  that  under  pressure  of  these  difficulties 
he  sometimes  felt  discouraged,  and  was  often  —  perhaps 
too  often  —  exasperated.  But  he  never  lost  courage, 
and  for  that  he  deserved  no  special  praise,  because  his 
work,  as  a  whole,  went  steadily  on,  and  he  had  good 
reason  to  know  that,  if  his  projects  could  not  be  carried 
successfully  out  in  Mississippi,  or  if  they  could  be  carried 
out  only  after  too  long  a  time,  he  would  have  no  diffi- 
culty in  transferring  his  labors  to  some  more  hopeful 
sphere. 

The  record  of  the  next  two  years  was  one  of  constant 
progress.  The  number  of  students  rose  rapidly;  the 
library  was  increased;  the  main  building  of  the  Uni- 
versity was  enlarged;  a  new  dormitory  and  a  second 
boarding-house  or  Commons  Hall  were  erected ;  the  pro- 
fessors' dwellings  were  repaired  and  enlarged ;  a  gym- 
nasium was  provided  ;  new  buildings  were  constructed 
for  the  department  of  Natural  Philosophy,  and  the  Chem- 
ical Laboratory  was  substantially  rebuilt.  Last  of  all, 
Barnard's  darling  scheme  of  an  Astronomical  Observatory 
was  adopted  and  extended  to  include  a  Magnetic  Obser- 
vatory ;  suitable  buildings  were  erected  for  both,  and 
the  necessary  instruments  for  both  were  ordered.  How 
completely  the  Board  of  Trustees  had  committed  itself 
to  his  views  of  a  State  university  was  shown  in  their 


236  MEMOIRS   OF 

Report  to  the  Legislature  of  1859,  in  which  they  declared 
that  "the  sense  of  the  people  of  Mississippi  demanded 
and  favored  the  elevation  of  the  University  into  a  school 
such  as  its  name  denotes  —  a  school  of  Universal  Instruc- 
tion." But  for  the  beginning  of  the  war  between  the 
States  in  1861,  there  is  little  reason  to  doubt  that  special 
scientific  schools  of  various  kinds  would  have  been  inau- 
gurated in  the  course  of  that  year. 

Even  in  1858  Barnard's  Letter  had  the  effect  of  making 
public  education  a  subject  of  unusual  interest  at  the 
meeting  of  the  Legislature,  and  while  some  of  the  projects 
which  were  discussed  there  were  wholly  impracticable, 
he  sedulously  encouraged  the  discussion.  To  his  intimate 
and  confidential  friend,  Dr.  Hilgard,  State  Geologist  of 
Mississippi,  he  wrote  under  date  of  November  11 : 

I  wish  you  would  give  Howry  any  advice  and  help  you  can 
on  University  matters.  Favor  the  agricultural  project.  What- 
ever practical  absurdity  it  may  for  the  present  involve,  if  it 
helps  to  continue  the  sinews  of  war  or  to  fund  the  debt,  it  is 
all  well.  I  have  told  Howry  to  encourage  it  by  all  means, 
but  to  say  at  the  same  time  that  it  can't  be  managed  without 
money.  Of  course  it  will  be  an  excrescence ;  it  can't  be  a  part 
of  undergraduate  instruction.  Encourage  the  Normal  idea; 
but  maintain  that  it  will  require  special  methods,  and  be  just 
as  distinct  an  addition  to  labor  as  if  a  new  department  or  two 
were  to  be  added  to  our  present  course.  The  Normal  School 
must,  in  fact,  be  an  independent  department.  It  will  require 
more  officers  and  more  money,  but  it  will  be  a  grand  thing 
for  the  State. 

Again,  under  date  of  December  1,  he  wrote  to  the  same 
correspondent : 

I  am  glad  to  see  that  education  is  in  so  high  feather  in 
Jackson.  I  am  encouraged  to  hammer  away  upon  the  same 
old  anvil.  Nothing  prevents  me  but  the  cost  of  publishing, 
even  though  I  "  print  at  the  North  "  cheaply.  If  the  Board 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  237 

would  foot  the  bill,  I  would  put  out  for  popular  circulation, 
some  sockdolagers  on  the  economy  of  educating  the  people  by 
a  thorough  and  efficient  system  of  common  schools,  subject  to 
a  common  direction  and  supported  mainly  by  public  appropria- 
tions. I  would,  in  short  order,  break  up  the  popularly  diffused 
error  which  assumes  antagonism  between  the  higher  and  the 
lower  education. 

When  a  man  of  real  power  makes  his  power  felt  in  any 
community,  he  begins  to  be  in  request  for  positions  in 
which  such  power  as  he  possesses  are  required,  arid  the 
forceful  intellectual  energy  which  Chancellor  Barnard 
was  exhibiting  led  to  more  than  one  intimation  that  he 
might,  if  he  would,  be  called  to  some  other  position  of 
eminence  in  education.  He  was  particularly  pleased  with 
a  suggestion  that  the  office  of  Vice- Chancellor,  that  is,  of 
active  head,  of  the  University  of  the  South  might  be 
offered  him.  It  may  be  said  without  exaggeration  that 
the  scheme  of  the  University  of  the  South,  at  the  time 
when  it  was  first  proposed  by  Bishop  Polk  of  Louisiana, 
was  the  grandest  scheme  of  a  great  university  which  had 
ever  been  conceived  in  this  country.  It  was  wholly 
original  with  Bishop  Polk,  a  fact  which  is  the  more 
remarkable,  as  he  was  not  himself  a  university  man,  but 
a  graduate  of  West  Point.  He  had  all  Dr.  Barnard's 
aversion  for  the  dormitory  system,  which  he  abhorred 
rather  than  disliked.  He  had  formulated  and  proposed 
to  the  other  Southern  bishops  the  complete  plan  of  a 
literary,  professional,  and  scientific  university,  including 
schools  for  the  acquisition  of  all  learning,  more  than  a 
year  before  Dr.  Barnard  published  anything  on  that  sub- 
ject, and  on  reading  Barnard's  Letter,  he  at  once  opened  a 
correspondence  with  him.  Their  views  were  similar; 
their  aspirations  were  thoroughly  sympathetic ;  there  was 
much  in  the  more  than  half -imperious  positiveness  of  the 


238  MEMOIRS   OF 

college-bred  professor  which  was  allied  to  the  soldierly 
character  of  the  quondam  cadet  of  West  Point,  now  a 
bishop,  who  was  soon  to  fall  in  battle  on  a  bloody  field. 
Barnard  was  inspired  with  the  grandeur  of  Folk's  plans 
and  with  the  good  assurance  of  their  fulfilment,  which 
nothing  but  civil  war  disappointed.  Polk,  on  his  part, 
saw  in  Barnard  a  breadth  of  thought  and  a  force  of  char- 
acter which  might  be  of  inestimable  value  in  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  University.  Bishop  Green  of  Mississippi  was 
enthusiastic  in  his  advocacy  of  Barnard  as  the  one  man  to 
be  secured,  and  to  be  secured,  if  possible,  at  once,  to  join 
in  the  preliminary  work  of  the  enterprise,  and  for  that 
purpose  to  visit  and  study  the  educational  institutions 
of  all  kinds,  including  the  gymnasiums,  upper  schools, 
technical  schools,  and  universities  of  Europe,  so  as  to  be 
prepared  with  detailed  plans  for  every  department  of  the 
new  institution.  For  a  time  this  prospect  dazzled  Barnard 
and  made  him  restive  under  the  petty  difficulties  and  ob- 
structions with  which  he  had  to  contend  at  Oxford,  and 
he  was  disappointed  and  annoyed  that  Bishop  Green's 
plan  was  not  adopted  without  delay.  He  was  hard 
worked  at  this  time,  and  through  the  few  letters  which 
have  been  preserved  there  runs  a  certain  tone  of  irrita- 
bility, alternating  and  contrasting  with  a  tone  of  eager 
but  confident  hope.  Thus  on  July  1  (1859)  he  writes  to 
Dr.  Hilgard : 

Had  the  Bishop  [Green]  here  —  a  very  pleasant  time.  He 
said  it  wouldn't  be  in  the  way  of  a  man  of  science  to  be  a 
Eoman  Catholic,  if  he  wanted  to  belong  to  the  University  of 
the  South.  This  was  said  apropos  of  the  present  Mississippi 
State  Geologist,  whom  he  considers  a  man  of  more  merit 
decidedly  than  his  predecessor.  He  told  me  that,  if  it  could 
be  fixed,  he  wanted  me  to  go  to  Europe  next  year  at  the 
expense  of  the  University  of  the  South,  but  without  resigning 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  239 

here,  say  on  furlough  from  this  institution.  The  only  trouble 
he  apprehended  was  that  no  provision  of  funds  had  yet  been 
made.  He  said,  without  any  pumping  or  fishing,  "  You  shall 
be  President  of  the  University,  if  I  can  make  you  so."  He 
had  formerly  hinted  more  vaguely  that  they  would  want  me ; 
this  time  he  was  more  explicit.  I  have  begun,  therefore,  to 
form  my  staff,  and  I  have  named  my  Master  of  the  Horse 
from  the  geological  field  of  Mississippi.  I  hope  he  will  find 
domestic  bliss  on  the  Sewanee  Mountain.  N.  B.  that  you  are  not 
to  trumpet  abroad  this  matter  of  the  University  of  the  South. 
Bishop  Green  says,  "  I  want  you  to  stay  here  [Oxford]  three 
years  longer."  Serving  a  pretty  good  space  for  Eachel ! 

Towards  the  close  of  the  year  his  mood  has  changed, 
and  he  writes,  on  November  11,  as  follows : 

MY  DEAR  HILGARD  :  The  M.  D.  made  a  failure  after  all.  I 
told  him  when  going  on  that  I  hardly  knew  how  to  bid  God- 
speed to  a  young  man  bent  on  the  insane  and  suicidal  — 
suicidal  so  far  as  happiness  is  concerned,  certainly  —  pursuit 
of  a  professorship  in  a  Southern  college ;  told  him,  as  the  re- 
sult of  my  own  experience,  that  if  I  stood  in  life  where  he 
was,  I  would  take  up  any  mechanic  art,  I  would  even  be  a 
private  soldier  or  a  day  laborer,  before  I  would  again  be  an 
officer  in  a  Southern  college.  But  my  flint  is  fixed ;  my  des- 
tiny is  marked  out. 

A  few  days  later  (November  16)  he  writes  : 

The  misery  of  a  situation  in  Mississippi  consists  in  the 
destructive  tendencies  of  the  people.  I  wrote  Young  only  a 
week  ago  that  so  intolerable  is  the  feeling  of  uncertainty  of 
the  future,  that  I  would  rather  occupy  the  humblest  station 
anywhere,  where  human  affairs  had  any  stability,  than  the 
highest  here.  As  I  have  thought  it  quite  possible  not  only 
that  the  University  would  not  secure  anything  more  from 
the  Legislature,  but  that  even  the  $20,000  law  might  be  re- 
pealed at  this  session,  and  possibly  a  successful  assault  might 
be  made  on  the  charter  itself,  of  course  I  have  had  my  appre- 
hensions also  for  your  interests.  The  failure  of  an  immediate 


240  MEMOIRS   OF 

explosion  here  has  surprised  me.  I  attribute  it  in  some  meas- 
ure to  the  Governor's  very  emphatic  language ;  for  though  he 
has  greatly  lost  political  strength,  —  and  mainly  by  one  un- 
fortunate act  of  clemency,  —  yet  no  one  doubts  his  judgment, 
and  a  very  small  potato  would  only  look  smaller  in  attacking 
the  University  or  its  intrinsic  merits.  While  I  ascribe  a  good 
deal  of  the  singular  quietness  of  the  electric  fluid  to  the 
paratonnerre  of  the  Governor,  I  take  some  small  amount  of 
credit  also  for  my  own  publication  and  Stearns',  though  both 
of  them  were  "  printed  at  the  North."  You  see  it  is  easy  to 
call  men  fools  when  the  public  has  no  evidences  to  judge  them 
by  ;  but  after  those  publications  I  suppose  the  sciolists  will  be 
likely  to  seek  other  grounds  of  complaint.  Not  that  the  pub- 
lications contain  much  in  themselves,  but  they  are  adapted,  in 
my  opinion,  to  show  asses  how  little  they  know.  As  to  C.'s 
opposition,  it  is  practically  of  no  importance;  but  I  regard  the 
University  as  a  thing  too  far  above  the  ruling  stupidity  of  the 
day  to  be  a  success ;  and  therefore  I  do  not  expect  to  stay  here 
beyond  another  year  or,  at  most,  two. 

Indeed,  I  have  for  some  months  been  seriously  thinking  of 
resigning  and  leaving  the  State  in  July  next.  My  mind  will 
be  decided  in  the  course,  probably,  of  this  session.  Several 
propositions  were  thrown  out  to  me  tentatively  while  I  was  at 
the  North.  They  all  had  the  one  most  welcome  feature  which 
belongs  to  nothing  in  Mississippi, — peace,  tranquillity,  perma- 
nence. I  did  build  a  little  on  assurances  made  to  me  by  mem- 
bers of  the  Trustees  —  Trustees !  I  share  your  disgust  at  that 
word  —  of  the  University  of  the  South.  Now,  I  begin  to 
believe  that  the  thing  is  going  to  be  a  good  deal  like  "Direct 
Trade  with  Europe,"  "Norfolk  Steam  Ferries,"  et  id  genus 
omne.  If  they  would  put  a  practical  and  energetic  man  at 
the  helm,  it  would  do;  but  with  ten  bishops  to  manage  it 
—  Southern  bishops,  moreover  —  what  is  it  likely  to  amount 
to  but  vox  — you  know  the  rest. 

Ebullitions  of  impatience  like  the  foregoing  were  in- 
dulged only  in  the  confidence  of  intimate  friendship;  to 
those  who  did  not  enjoy  his  perfect  confidence  he  bore 
himself  with  entire  serenity,  and  if  he  secretly  fretted 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BAKNARD  241 

at  trivial  difficulties  or  resented  what  he  deemed  to  be 
needless  delays  in  the  execution  of  his  plans,  he  sought 
the  scholar's  natural  satisfaction  in  intellectual  occupa- 
tion. At  a  meeting  of  the  American  Association  for  the 
Advancement  of  Science,  held  in  Montreal  in  August, 
1857,  he  had  been  appointed  one  of  a  Committee  of 
Twenty  to  inquire  into  the  Coast  Survey  of  the  United 
States  and  report  to  the  Association.1  Soon  after  the 
meeting,  Judge  Kane,  who  had  been  named  as  Chairman, 
addressed  a  circular  letter  to  his  associates  of  the  Com- 
mittee, setting  forth  the  topics  on  which  it  was  especially 
desirable  that  they  should  present  a  report,  but  at  the 
same  time  advising  them  that  he  did  not  wish  to  "cir- 
cumscribe the  range  of  their  communications,  nor  indeed 
to  define  the  subjects  which  should  enter  into  the  report." 
He  said  that,  unless  it  should  be  otherwise  ordered  by  the 
Committee,  it  would  be  his  object  "  to  submit  to  the  Asso- 
ciation, and  through  it  to  the  community,  a  popular  view 
of  the  objects  and  course  of  the  Survey,  and  of  the 
influence  it  is  exerting,  and  may  continue  to  exert,  on 
different  interests  of  the  country."  In  conclusion  he 
begged  his  associates,  as  a  personal  favor  to  himself,  to 
give  him  their  earnest  cooperation  in  preparing  the  mate- 
rial of  the  report.  This  courteous  appeal  had  all  the 

1  The  members  of  this  committee  were  as  follows :  Judge  J.  K.  Kane, 
Pres.  Amer.  Philos.  Soc.,  Pa.,  Chairman ;  Gen.  J.  G.  Totten,  Chief  Eng. 
U.  S.  A.  ;  Profs.  B.  Peirce,  Harvard ;  John  Torrey,  U.  S.  Assay  Office, 
N.  Y. ;  Joseph  Henry,  Sec.  Smithsonian  Institute,  D.  C.  ;  J.  F.  Frazer, 
Univ.  Pennsylvania;  Wm.  Chauvenet,  U.  S.  Naval  Acad.,  Annapolis; 
F.  A.  P.  Barnard,  Univ.  Miss.  ;  John  Leconte,  Col.  of  S.  C.  ;  Wm.  M. 
Gillespie,  Union  Col.,  N.  Y. ;  F.  H.  Smith,  Univ.  Virginia ;  W.  H.  C. 
Bartlett,  U.  S.  Mil.  Acad.,  West  Point;  Wolcott  Gibbs,  Free  Acad., 
N.  Y. ;  Stephen  Alexander,  Col.  of  New  Jersey  ;  Lewis  R.  Gibbs,  Charles- 
ton Col.,  S.  C. ;  Joseph  Winlock,  Sup't  Am.  Naut.  Aim.,  Ky. ;  James 
Phillips,  Univ.  N.  C. ;  William  Ferrel,  Nashville,  Tenn. ;  Edward  Hitch- 
cock, Amherst  Col.,  Mass. ;  James  D.  Dana,  Yale  Col.,  Conn. 

B 


242  MEMOIRS   OF 

effect  that  the  distinguished  Chairman  could  have  desired. 
There  was  a  general  response  to  his  request  for  contribu- 
tions, and  some  of  the  members  of  the  Committee  replied 
at  considerable  length;  but  on  February  21,  1858,  before 
these  papers  could  be  completely  analyzed,  or  even  ar- 
ranged, Judge  Kane  died,  justly  lamented  wherever  his 
name  was  known.  At  the  meeting  of  the  Association,  held 
at  Baltimore  in  the  month  of  April  following,  Chancellor 
Barnard,  though  he  was  not  present,  was  appointed  Chair- 
man of  the  Committee,  and  the  whole  work  of  preparing 
and  publishing  the  report  was  entrusted  to  him.  He  found 
it  to  be  no  easy  task.  The  wide  range  of  topic  and  treat- 
ment suggested  by  Judge  Kane  had  been  somewhat  liber- 
ally construed,  and  it  was  no  light  labor  to  unite  and 
condense  the  various  contributions  into  one  clear  and 
consecutive  report.  In  his  present  irritable  frame  of 
mind  Barnard  was  none  too  gentle  in  his  criticisms  of 
the  work  of  his  colleagues.  On  October  23  he  wrote 
to  his  friend  Hilgard: 

If  I  don't  write  you,  you  mustn't  mind  it  for  the  present. 
I  have  sixteen  [University]  exercises  per  week  —  three  a  day, 
except  Saturday,  and  I  am  so  interrupted  that  I  am  nearly 
crushed  with  my  official  work.  I  have  had  the  Coast  Survey 
on  hand.  It  has  to  be  wholly  re-written.  I  would  not  give 
two  straws  for  all  the  material  furnished,  except  that  which 
came  from  the  Coast  Survey  Office  itself.  I  have  two  other 
literary  tasks  also,1  which  I  could  less  easily  explain ;  and  such 
has  been  the  constant  succession  of  interfering  causes  that, 
with  the  pile  of  papers  all  the  time  by  me,  I  have  not  been 
able  to  add  one  line  to  the  report  for  nine  days.  So  you  see 
I  must  now  —  there  seems  to  be  a  cessation  for  the  moment  — 

1  Probably  an  essay  on  "  The  Pendulum,"  published  by  Van  Nostrand, 
N.  Y.,  1859,  and  a  contribution  to  the  proceedings  of  the  American  Asso- 
ciation for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  "On  the  Means  of  Preserving 
Electric  Contacts  from  Vitiation  by  the  Spark." 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  243 

use  all  my  time,  night  and  day.  In  fact,  I  have  cut  into  the 
night  heavily  several  times  already.  I  have  got  the  heft  —  in 
the  Yankee,  not  the  German  sense  —  off  my  hands,  as  far  as 
composition  goes.  It  is  true  the  tail-piece  is  to  be  made,  and 
some  of  the  crude  compositions  of  the  savans  —  none  of  them 
creditable,  if  published  as  they  stand  —  are  to  be  worked  in, 
if  possible.  Now  the  task  is  to  copy  —  for  it  must  all  be 
copied;  Joseph's  coat  of  many  colors  would  be  uniformity 
itself  compared  with  the  MS.  as  it  stands.  Hie  labor,  hoc 
opus  est.  I  will  write  you  as  often  as  I  can.  I  suppose  no 
good  is  to  come  of  the  Legislature.  I  am  in  a  frame  of  mind 
in  which  I  care  little  personally  either  way.  I  am  inwardly 
strong  in  the  consciousness  of  having  done  my  duty  and  in 
the  conviction  that  I  have  done  some  work  here  which  will 
not  die  with  me.  If  they  break  down  the  University,  I  am 
content  with  my  part  in  the  verdict  of  posterity. 

The  Report  on  the  Coast  Survey  was  published  in 
November,  1858.  It  was  signed  by  all  the  members  of 
the  Committee,  but  in  form,  as  in  fact,  it  was  a  personal 
report.  In  an  "  Introduction  Explanatory,"  Barnard 
narrated  the  history  of  the  work.  He  told  how  it  had 
been  put  into  his  hands  and  the  difficulties  with  which  he 
had  had  to  contend  in  discharging  the  duty  imposed  upon 
him.  In  conclusion  he  tendered  his  thanks  to  those  of 
his  associates  whose  contributions  had  come  into  his 
possession,  for  the  valuable  aid  they  had  afforded  him. 
Beyond  this  merely  formal  recognition  of  them  he  did  not 
go.  The  work  was  honestly  his  own,  and  he  published  it 
in  such  a  form  that  it  should  be  known  to  be  his.  It 
was  a  pamphlet  of  nearly  ninety  pages  octavo,  closely 
printed,  but  although  it  was  recognized  as  a  work  of 
great  ability,  and  had  the  immediate  effect  of  putting  its 
author  as  high  in  the  ranks  of  men  of  science  as  he  already 
stood  as  an  educator,  it  would  be  needless  and  out  of 
place  to  attempt  here  to  analyze  its  contents.  During  the 


244  MEMOIRS   OF 

same  year  in  which  the  report  was  published  he  delivered 
an  oration  before  the  Society  of  the  Alumni  of  Yale 
College  on  "  The  Special  Responsibilities  and  Opportuni- 
ties of  Educated  Men  as  Citizens,"  and  in  the  following 
year  he  was  admitted  by  his  alma  mater  to  the  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Laws,  which  had  already  been  conferred  upon 
him  by  Jefferson  College,  Mississippi. 

Meanwhile  he  was  pressing  on,  as  well  and  as  rapidly 
as  possible,  in  the  preparatory  work  of  the  Astronomical 
Observatory  of  the  University,  and  also  of  a  Magnetic 
Observatory  for  the  automatic  registration  of  the  various 
elements  of  terrestrial  magnetism.  In  1859  the  buildings 
were  completed,  and  the  instruments  were  ordered  from 
the  best  makers.  The  construction  of  the  telescope  was 
committed  to  Mr.  Alvan  Clark  of  Cambridge,  Massachu- 
setts. The  lens  of  the  telescope  in  the  Observatory  at 
Harvard  was  fifteen  inches  in  diameter.  Barnard  ordered 
a  lens  of  nineteen  inches,  which  Clark  at  first  hesitated  to 
undertake.  He  proposed  instead  to  construct  a  lens  of 
the  same  dimensions  as  that  of  Harvard,  offering  to  test 
it,  when  completed,  in  the  Harvard  tube,  and  then  to  give 
it  to  Barnard  for  nothing  if  it  were  not  found  to  be  equal 
to  the  Harvard  glass.  Barnard  insisted  on  the  construc- 
tion of  a  glass  of  nineteen  inches,  and  was  ready  to  comply 
with  the  usual  terms  of  such  orders,  which  required  the 
payment  of  one  third  of  the  stipulated  price  in  advance, 
one  third  when  the  glass  had  been  so  far  ground  as  to  be 
evidently  perfect,  and  the  remainder  on  the  completion  of 
the  instrument.  Mr.  Clark  declined  to  receive  any 
part  of  the  price  before  the  instrument  should  be  finished. 
Unfortunately  it  was  not  until  the  summer  of  1861  that 
he  was  able  to  announce  its  completion.  The  country 
was  on  the  brink  of  civil  war  when  Barnard  received  a 
letter  informing  him  that  if  he  would  visit  Cambridge 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  245 

about  the  end  of  June,  he  would  then  be  able  to  make 
an  observation  through  his  telescope.  At  that  very  time, 
however,  postal  communication  between  the  North  and 
the  South  came  to  an  end,  and  travel  without  passports 
ceased.  The  telescope  was  forgotten  in  the  whirl  of 
popular  excitement.  It  could  not  be  delivered,  and  it 
was  never  paid  for.  It  is  now  mounted  in  the  Dearborn 
Observatory  at  Chicago.  Its  lens  is  about  eighteen  inches 
and  one-half  in  diameter.  The  instruments  for  the  Mag- 
netic Observatory  were  made  by  Mr.  Wurdemann  of 
Washington ;  the  building  was  ready  to  receive  them, 
and  Mr.  Wurdemann  was  nearly  ready  to  deliver  them 
when  the  outbreak  of  the  war  put  an  end  to  the  whole 
scheme  on  which  so  much  time  and  earnest  labor  had 
been  expended. 

But  the  telescope,  at  least,  was  destined  to  have  an 
auspicious  opening  of  its  service  to  astronomy.  In  1862, 
when  Barnard  had  just  reached  Washington,  one  of  the 
first  persons  he  chanced  to  meet  was  Lieutenant,  after- 
wards Admiral,  Gilliss,  who  exclaimed,  "I  have  just 
been  in  Cambridge  to  test  your  telescope.  The  glass  has 
not  yet  been  mounted  in  a  tube,  but  it  has  made  an  im- 
portant discovery  already.  It  has  detected  a  companion 
to  Sirius  !  "  In  a  subsequent  visit  to  Cambridge  Barnard 
heard  the  story  from  Mr.  Clark  himself.  In  testing 
glasses,  it  was  Clark's  custom  to  mount  them  on  a  long 
swinging  pole,  like  a  well-sweep,  fixing  the  glass  firmly 
at  one  end  and  attaching  to  the  other  end  a  short  tube 
containing  the  eye-pieces.  In  testing  Barnard's  glass,  he 
had  directed  the  apparatus  towards  the  dog-star,  while 
the  star  was  still  concealed  behind  a  corner  of  the  house. 
His  object  was  to  see  how  long  the  brightness  of  the  star 
might  be  perceptible  before  the  star  itself  came  into  the 
field  of  view.  While  he  observed  the  time,  his  son  used 


246  MEMOIRS   OP 

the  eye-piece,  and  as  soon  as  Sirius  appeared,  the  younger 
Clark  exclaimed,  "  It  has  a  companion  !  "  The  obser- 
vation was  immediately  verified,  and  the  elder  Clark 
always  expressed  his  regret  that  he  himself  had  not  been 
the  first  to  see  the  companion  of  the  dog-star. 

Towards  the  close  of  1859  and  in  the  beginning  of  1860 
Barnard  was  greatly  annoyed  by  a  petty  persecution,  the 
motive  of  which  was  purely  personal,  but  the  pretext  of 
which  was  an  allegation  that  he  was  not  a  trustworthy 
citizen  of  the  South.  This  was  a  charge  which  it  was  easy 
to  make  against  a  man  of  Northern  birth,  and  which  was 
both  humiliating  in  itself  and  difficult  to  repel.  There 
was  more  or  less  disaffection  towards  him  in  the  Faculty. 
It  would  have  been  strange  if  his  growing  influence  and 
distinction  had  not  caused  some  motions  of  envy  among 
his  colleagues,  and  it  is  more  than  probable  that  his  natu- 
rally imperious  temper  and  the  irritability  which  he  mani- 
fested at  that  time  of  his  life  may  have  given  some  cause 
of  resentment.  It  does  not  appear,  however,  that  more 
than  one  of  his  colleagues  was  actively  opposed  to  him, 
and  the  occasion  of  dissension  did  little  honor  to  those 
who  were  concerned  in  it.  The  facts  were  these  :  One 
of  the  students  of  the  University  who  had  been  noted  by 
the  Faculty  in  general  as  a  disorderly  and  ill-behaved 
person,  entered  Barnard's  private  premises  during  his 
absence,  and  brutally  maltreated  a  female  servant.  Bar- 
nard, having  assured  himself  of  the  fact  of  the  assault, 
wrote  to  the  student,  charging  him  with  the  offence  and 
advising  him  to  withdraw.  The  young  man  called  on 
Barnard  and  made  an  unsatisfactory  denial  of  the  charge, 
but  agreed  to  withdraw.  Two  days  later,  as  this  promise 
had  not  been  fulfilled,  Barnard  wrote  again,  saying  that 
unless  the  student  should  leave  immediately,  he  would 
write  to  his  guardian  and  give  a  full  account  of  the 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  247 

offence.  The  student  then  refused  to  leave  the  Uni- 
versity without  a  trial  before  the  Faculty,  to  which  he 
was  entitled  under  the  statutes.  The  trial  was  held 
accordingly.  The  student  pleaded  Not  Guilty,  but  he 
afterwards  explained  that,  although  he  had  committed 
the  assault,  he  had  not  committed  it  at  the  time  stated  in 
the  charge,  and  was  therefore  entitled  to  plead  that  he 
was  not  guilty  as  charged  in  the  presentment.  In  his 
defence  he  endeavored  to  prove  an  alibi,  in  which  he  was 
thought  by  some  of  the  Faculty  to  be  successful,  while 
others  thought  that  he  failed.  The  truth  probably  was 
that  he  may  have  succeeded  in  proving  that  he  was  not 
on  Barnard's  premises  at  the  time  when  the  assault  was 
said  to  have  been  committed,  but  that  he  still  left  in  the 
minds  of  a  majority  of  the  professors  a  clear  conviction 
that  he  had  committed  the  assault.  The  difficulty  of  the 
whole  case  was  that  it  was  impossible  to  prove  the  fact 
of  the  assault  by  the  evidence  of  a  white  person,  the  only 
white  person  who  could  have  proved  or  disproved  it  re- 
fusing to  do  either.  A  majority  of  the  Faculty  felt  that 
they  were  not  at  liberty  to  convict  a  student  on  evidence 
which  the  State  did  not  admit  in  courts  of  justice,  that  is  to 
say,  on  "  negro  evidence,"  and  on  that  only  at  second  hand 
without  direct  examination  and  cross-examination  of  the 
actual  witnesses.  In  this  opinion  there  can  be  little  doubt 
that  the  majority  were  right  though  the  minority  main- 
tained that  the  Faculty  were  not  so  bound  by  legal  rules 
as  to  be  debarred  from  rendering  a  verdict  of  Guilty 
when  they  were  fully  satisfied  that  the  accused  was 
guilty.  In  support  of  the  view  of  the  minority,  instances 
were  cited  in  which  much  less  strictness  had  been  applied 
in  receiving  evidence  against  a  student ;  but  the  intro- 
duction of  the  negro  question  into  the  case  sufficed  to 
make  the  majority  immovable,  and  when  a  resolution  was 


248  MEMOIRS   OF 

i 

moved  as  the  verdict  of  the  Faculty,  "That  Mr.  H.,  hav- 
ing been  found  guilty  of  the  offence  charged  against  him, 
be,  and  is  hereby,  suspended  from  the  University,"  the 
motion  was  lost  by  the  following  vote  : 

For  the  motion  —  Barnard,  Boynton,  Moore. 

Against  the  motion  —  Richardson,  Stearns,  Whitehorne, 
Phipps,  Carter. 

The  following  resolution  was  then  offered :  "  That 
although  the  Faculty  are  morally  convinced  of  Mr.  H.'s 
guilt,  yet  they  do  not  consider  the  evidence  adduced 
to  substantiate  the  charge  as  sufficient,  legally,  to  convict 
him."  This  resolution  was  adopted  by  the  following 
vote  : 

For  the  motion  —  Barnard,  Stearns,  Whitehorne,  Moore, 
Phipps. 

Against  the  motion — Richardson,  Boynton,  Carter. 

A  motion  was  then  made  to  permit  the  minority  who 
had  voted  to  sustain  the  charges  against  the  accused  to 
spread  on  the  record  their  reasons  for  that  verdict.  The 
reasons  which  they  desired  to  record  were  substantially  to 
the  effect  that  his  own  conduct  had  furnished  a  serious 
presumption  against  him  ;  that,  in  their  opinion,  he  had 
failed  to  prove  an  alibi ;  that  the  only  witness  who  could 
have  given  evidence  of  his  innocence  had  refused  to 
testify  on  that  point ;  and  that  a  member  of  the  Faculty 
had  declared  that  he  knew  the  accused  to  be  guilty  on 
the  testimony  of  a  third  person,  whom,  however,  he 
declined  to  name.  After  a  long  discussion  this  motion 
was  carried,  all  the  Faculty  voting  in  the  affirmative 
with  the  single  exception  of  Mr.  Carter,  who  voted  in  the 
negative. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  secrecy  of  the  Faculty  meet- 
ing was  disregarded,  and  indeed  Professor  Carter  denied 
that  he  was  bound  by  any  obligation  of  secrecy  in  regard 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  249 

to  Faculty  proceedings.  It  was  soon  published  abroad 
that  Chancellor  Barnard  had  tried  to  convict  a  student 
on  negro  evidence,  and  he  was  accused  of  being  inimical 
to  Southern  institutions.  For  a  time  he  paid  no  regard 
to  these  rumors,  but  at  length,  stung  to  the  quick  by  a 
persecution  for  which  he  knew  that  there  was  no  founda- 
tion, he  requested  that  a  meeting  of  the  Board  of  Trustees 
should  be  held,  and  that  the  whole  affair  should  be  thor- 
oughly investigated.  The  meeting  was  held  at  his  re- 
quest on  February  29,  1860,  when  the  charges  which  had 
been  made  against  him  by  one  Dr.  Branham  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Colonel  A.  H.  Pegues,  a  member  of  the  Board, 
were  laid  before  the  Board  as  follows: 

1.  That  Barnard  was  unsound  on  the  slavery  question. 

2.  That  he  advocated  the  taking  of  negro  testimony 
against  a  student. 

3.  That  a  student  was  arraigned  upon  negro  testimony. 

4.  That  on  the  question  of  the  expulsion  of  the  student, 
Barnard  and  two  other  Northern  men  voted  in  the  affirma- 
tive, while  all  the  Southern  men  voted  in  the  negative. 

5.  That  during  the  discussion  of  the  question  Barnard 
asked  Professor  Richardson  whether  he  would  not  believe 
his  negro  man  against  a  student,  and  that,  when  Richard- 
son said  he  would  not,  Barnard  declared  that  he  would. 

6.  That  all  the  information  in  the  case  was  furnished 
by  a  negro  woman. 

7.  That  Barnard  had  stated  that  the  woman  had  pointed 
out  to  him  the  man  who  had  assaulted  her. 

8.  That  notwithstanding  the  vote  of  the  Faculty,  Bar- 
nard wrote  to  the  student's  guardian  to  take  him  away, 
and  that  he  did  so.     [This  was  true.] 

9.  In  case  the  Board  of  Trustees  refused  to  arraign  and 
try  Barnard  for  taking  negro  testimony  against  a  student, 
Dr.  Branham   threatened  to  publish  the  whole  affair  in 


250  MEMOIRS   OF 

The  Mississippian  over  his  own  signature,  and  so  make  it 
known  to  the  people  of  the  State. 

These  charges  were  laid  before  the  Board  by  Barnard 
himself  in  a  communication  in  which  he  betrayed  unusual 
excitement.  He  said  : 

Of  these  allegations,  and  of  the  whole  matter  or  matters 
to  which  they  relate,  I  invite  the  fullest  and  most  searching 
investigation  on  the  part  of  your  honorable  body.  I  invite, 
further,  an  examination  into  the  tenor  of  my  past  life,  not  only 
for  the  period  of  twenty-two  years  that  I  have  spent  in  un- 
wearied devotion  to  the  cause  of  Southern  education,  but  for 
that  earlier  period  of  youth  when  I  had  not  yet  expected  ever 
to  be  a  resident  of  a  Southern  State,  but  in  regard  to  which  I 
have,  providentially,  in  my  possession  testimonials  by  Southern 
men  of  the  most  unexceptionable  character. 

If  I  entertain  now,  or  if  your  investigation  shall  discover 
that  I  have  ever  entertained,  sentiments  which  shall  justify 
any  man,  however  captious,  in  pronouncing  me  "unsound  on 
the  slavery  question,"  then,  gentlemen,  do  your  duty,  and 
remove  me  from  a  position  for  which  I  am  morally  disqualified. 

But  if,  on  the  contrary,  after  the  severest  scrutiny  of  my 
acts  and  my  utterances,  you  find  that  the  injurious  allegations 
by  which  it  has  been  attempted  to  strike  me  down  from  my 
post  of  usefulness  and  to  expose  me  to  public  opprobrium,  are 
totally  and  entirely  groundless  and  false,  then  I  ask  of  you,  in 
justice  to  one  who  has  for  nearly  six  years  honestly,  conscien- 
tiously, and  faithfully  consecrated  to  your  service  all  the  ener- 
gies of  his  intellectual  and  physical  being,  to  put  the  stamp 
of  your  emphatic  condemnation  upon  an  outrage,  in.  my  view, 
without  a  parallel  in  the  annals  of  civilization. 

The  investigation  of  the  charges  against  Barnard  by  the 
Board  of  Trustees  was  full  and  thorough.  Every  profes- 
sor of  the  University  was  heard,  and  Dr.  Branham  also 
appeared  before  the  Board.  The  result  was  what  might 
have  been  anticipated.  The  Board  adopted  the  two 
following  resolutions  unanimously : 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD  251 

Resolved,  That  the  charges  are,  in  their  opinion,  wholly  un- 
sustained  by  the  evidence,  and  that  the  said  F.  A.  P.  Barnard 
stands  fully  and  honorably  acquitted  of  every  charge  brought 
against  him. 

Resolved,  That  after  a  patient  hearing  and  investigation  of 
all  the  testimony  in  the  case,  we,  as  Trustees,  and  as  Southern 
men,  have  found  our  confidence  in  the  ability  and  the  integrity 
of  the  Chancellor,  and  his  fitness  for  his  position,  increased 
rather  than  diminished,  and  declare  our  full  conviction  that  his 
labors  are  doing  great  service  to  the  cause  of  education  and 
science  and  placing  the  reputation  of  the  University  upon  an 
immovable  basis. 

This  annoying  incident  might  perhaps  have  been  passed 
over  in  silence,  if  it  did  not  serve  to  illustrate  the  attitude 
of  Dr.  Barnard  as  a  man  of  Northern  birth  living  at 
the  South  before  the  war  of  the  Rebellion.  There  were 
scores  of  thousands  of  men  at  the  South  in  much  the  same 
position  as  he,  and  it  will  some  time  be  the  duty  of  the 
historian  of  that  period  to  trace  the  motives  and  influences 
by  which  they  were  affected.  In  such  an  inquiry  the  true 
sentiments  of  representative  men  will  be  difficult  to  learn, 
and  will  often  be  misunderstood.  In  the  case  of  Barnard 
himself  there  is  already  a  sort  of  mythology.  He  has 
been  represented  as  a  fugitive  from  the  South,  as  if  he  had 
been  driven  away  by  violence  on  account  of  his  known 
aversion  to  the  Southern  cause.  Nothing  could  be  more 
utterly  untrue.  The  Branham  charges  were  dismissed  as 
baseless  slanders;  to  the  last  moment  of  his  residence  at 
the  South,  more  than  a  year  after  the  outbreak  of  the  war, 
he  was  not  even  suspected  of  disaffection  to  the  cause  of 
the  South,  and  he  was  even  offered  a  place  of  confidence 
under  the  Confederate  government.  This  fact  will  appear 
further  on.  In  the  mean  time  it  is  proper  to  show  his 
sentiments  on  the  slavery  question. 

There  is  nothing  to  show  that  he  ever  entertained  any 


252  MEMOIRS   OF 

strong  feelings  on  that  subject.  He  was  not  a  man  whose 
feelings  governed  his  convictions.  Born  at  the  North 
and  under  the  influence  of  antislavery  agitation,  he  was 
brought  up  to  regard  slavery  as  an  evil  in  itself  and  as  a 
misfortune  to  the  country.  Yet  even  in  his  youth,  he 
perceived  the  full  force  of  the  argument  that  property  in 
slaves  was  recognized  in  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  and  held  that  the  Federal  Government  was  bound 
by  the  Constitution  to  protect  slave  property  according  to 
the  terms  of  that  instrument.  Hence  Barnard  was  never 
an  abolitionist ;  as  long  as  the  Whig  party  continued  to 
exist  he  was  a  resolute  and  ardent  adherent  of  that  party. 
Before  he  went  to  the  South  he  was  inclined  to  favor  the 
African  colonization  scheme  which  contemplated  the  vol- 
untary emancipation  of  the  slaves  by  their  masters,  and 
their  deportation  to  the  west  coast  of  Africa.  When  he 
had  lived  for  a  time  at  the  South,  he  saw  that  the  coloni- 
zation scheme  was  visionary.  Compulsory  emancipation 
was  out  of  the  question.  There  seemed  to  be  no  way  to 
the  abandonment  of  slavery  without  some  bloody  revolu- 
tion which  it  would  be  wickedness  to  precipitate.  He 
was  not  a  man  to  waste  his  time  or  his  energies  on  the 
solution  of  insoluble  problems,  and  there  is  no  evidence 
that  he  gave  any  large  amount  of  thought  to  the  slavery 
question.  He  accepted  slavery  as  an  unwelcome  fact ;  he 
acquiesced  in  it  as  an  established  fact ;  he  defended  it  as 
a  fact  that  could  not,  in  his  opinion,  be  annulled  or 
eliminated  from  the  social  state  of  the  South ;  and,  finally, 
he  participated  in  it  by  becoming,  of  his  own  will,  a  slave- 
holder. His  course  in  public  and  private  was  perfectly 
consistent  from  beginning  to  end.  In  the  investigation 
made  by  the  Board  of  Trustees  he  was  able  to  present 
documentary  testimony  of  unimpeachable  authority,  and 
reaching  back  to  1837,  that  he  was  "  a  warm  supporter  of 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  253 

Southern  institutions,"  "  and  that  on  all  important  ques- 
tions which  might  agitate  the  North  against  the  South,  his 
actions  and  feelings  would  be  truly  Southern."  After  an 
acquaintance  with  him  of  twenty  years,  men  like  Judge 
Ormond  and  Mr.  Garland  were  ready  to  testify  that  they 
"  had  never  heard  his  attachment  to  the  institutions  of  the 
South  called  in  question,"  and  that  in  their  intercourse 
with  him  they  had  never  witnessed  "  anything  in  act 
or  speech  calculated  to  induce  a  suspicion  that  he  was  not 
entirely  identified  with  the  South  and  attached  to  her 
institutions  and  domestic  policy."  This  was  not  a  merely 
negative  inference;  it  was  supported  by  Barnard's  own 
positive  declaration.  In  the  presence  of  the  Board  he 
said: 

As  to  my  sentiments  on  the  subject  of  slavery,  my  record  is 
clear  for  my  whole  life.  As  for  that  early  period  of  it  when  I 
resided  in  New  York,  and  before  I  ever  thought  of  becoming 
a  citizen  of  the  South,  I  submit  extracts  from  letters  written 
by  Southern  men  in  1837.  .  .  .  As  to  my  nearly  seventeen  years 
of  residence  in  Alabama,  the  testimony  of  Judge  Ormond  and 
President  Garland,  obtained  without  my  knowledge,  has  been 
presented.  Of  the  sentiments  I  have  consistently  professed 
since  I  came  here,  enough  has  been  said  by  others.  I  was  born 
at  the  North.  That  I  cannot  help.  I  was  not  consulted  in  the 
matter.  I  am  a  slaveholder,  and,  if  I  know  myself,  I  am 
"  sound  on  the  slavery  question." 

On  the  subject  of  the  Union,  Barnard  was  quite  as  con- 
sistent as  on  the  subject  of  slavery.  He  was  a  Union  man. 
Whatever  political  influence  he  had  was  always  exerted  in 
fostering  a  spirit  of  loyalty  to  the  Union.  He  contem- 
plated the  possibility  of  a  disruption  of  the  Union  with 
horror.  Yet  he  had  cast  in  his  lot  with  the  South,  and  he 
stood  by  his  section.  When  he  found  that  he  must  send 
a  manuscript  to  the  North,  if  he  would  have  it  well  and 


254  MEMOIRS  OP 

cheaply  printed,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  do  so  in  spite  of 
the  outcry  that  he  ought  to  pay  higher  prices  for  inferior 
work  at  home ;  but  he  did  feel  that  good  work  ought  to  be 
done  as  cheaply  at  the  South  as  at  the  North,  and  he  was 
never  weary  of  exhorting  the  people  of  the  South  to 
diversify  their  industries,  so  that  they  should  not  be  de- 
pendent on  the  North  for  work  or  for  commodities  which 
they  were  amply  able  to  provide  at  home.  In  his  eager- 
ness to  promote  Southern  industrial  independence  he  was 
ready  to  cooperate  even  with  the  "  fire-eating  "  radicals 
whom  he  detested,  and  actually  attended  one  of  their  con- 
ventions, sitting  patiently  day  after  day  for  an  opportunity 
—  which  never  came  —  to  introduce  a  project  for  prepar- 
ing a  series  of  school-books  to  be  published  and  used  in  the 
schools  of  the  South,  which  were  then  dependent  on  the 
North  as  they  still  are  for  their  whole  supply.  In  these 
feelings  he  was  perfectly  at  one  with  the  best  men  of  the 
South.  Only  an  insignificant  minority  of  the  Southern 
people  desired  disunion  for  its  own  sake,  but  all  enlightened 
Southerners  desired  the  commercial  and  industrial  inde- 
pendence of  their  section  ;  and  so  did  Barnard.  However 
strongly  averse  to  disunion,  there  were  very  few  men  at  the 
South  who  did  not  apprehend  that  the  growing  abolition 
sentiment  at  the  North  might  give  the  power  of  the 
national  government  into  the  hands  of  a  party  pledged  to 
interfere  with  Southern  rights  under  the  Constitution,  and 
in  that  event  they  knew  that  a  disruption  of  the  Union 
would  follow  unless  it  were  prevented  by  force.  In  this 
apprehension  Barnard  shared  deeply  and  anxiously.  In 
a  Thanksgiving  sermon  delivered  immediately  after  the 
exciting  presidential  campaign  of  1856,  he  gave  no  uncer- 
tain expression  to  his  love  of  the  Union,  but  he  spoke 
with  equal  clearness  and  conviction  of  his  forebodings 
concerning  it.  An  extract  from  this  discourse  may  well 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  255 

be  given  here,  as  it  was  submitted  to  the  Board  of 
Trustees  in  Barnard's  defence  by  his  friend  Colonel 
Pegues  in  answer  to  the  charges  of  Dr.  Branham.  The 
sermon  had  been  delivered  at  Oxford  on  Thanksgiving 
Day,  November  20,  1856,  and  had  been  published  by 
request. 

A  far  graver  menace  than  this  seemed  to  spring  out  of  our 
disturbed  relations  with  a  portion  of  our  own  fellow-citizens 
inhabiting  a  different  section  of  our  common  country.  The 
year  through  which  we  have  just  passed  has  indeed,  in  this 
respect,  been  the  darkest  of  all  which  have  left  their  record 
upon  the  page  of  our  country's  history.  It  was  this  time  no 
trivial  cloud  which  had  suddenly  gathered  to  darken  for  a 
moment  our  political  firmament,  but  it  was  one  which  had  long 
hung  lowering  in  the  distance,  sometimes  rolling  up  in  formi- 
dable masses  toward  the  zenith,  revealing  in  occasional  flashes 
the  angry  fires  which  were  slumbering  in  its  bosom,  and  again 
subsiding  for  a  time  to  less  portentous  dimensions,  but  never 
wholly  disappearing  —  it  was  this  which,  during  the  last  anx- 
ious summer,  the  friends  of  God  and  of  peace  and  of  human 
progress  were  breathlessly  watching,  as,  in  darker  and  still 
darker  volume,  it  spread  itself  over  the  entire  heaven,  and 
seemed  ready  to  burst  into  a  storm  whose  violence  should 
shake  the  continent. 

It  is  no  purpose  of  mine  to  discuss  the  causes  which,  during 
a  long  series  of  years,  have  fomented  a  state  of  feeling  among 
our  people  so  much  to  be  deplored,  so  fraught  with  danger  to 
our  peace,  so  menacing  to  the  permanence  of  our  unity  as  a 
nation.  Such  a  discussion  is  not  meet  either  for  this  place  or 
for  this  occasion.  But  it  is  proper  and  it  is  fitting,  since  the 
catastrophe  so  tremblingly  anticipated  by  so  many  anxious 
hearts  has  been  for  the  time  —  may  we  not  believe,  in  the  pur- 
poses of  God,  forever  ?  —  averted,  it  is  proper  and  it  is  fitting 
for  me  to  remind  you  that  this  deliverance  imposes  upon  you 
a  deeper  debt  of  gratitude  to  your  Almighty  Benefactor  than 
any  other  national  blessing  which  He  has  bestowed  upon  this 
people  since  their  original  recognition  into  the  family  of 
nations. 


256  MEMOIRS   OF 

That  the  union  of  these  States  was  originally  a  benefit  to 
every  member  of  the  confederacy,  I  believe  that  no  man  has 
ever  doubted.  That,  so  long  as  the  principle  of  equality  among 
the  several  members,  on  the  basis  of  which  it  was  established, 
remains  intact,  it  must  continue  to  be,  no  less  than  it  was  orig- 
inally, a  benefit  to  all  alike,  I  believe  to  be  just  as  undeniable. 
That  its  disruption,  therefore,  in  itself  considered,  must  be 
a  calamity,  and  an  incalculable  calamity,  admits  in  my  mind 
of  not  a  shadow  of  doubt.  Yet  it  is  no  less  true,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  every  benefit,  small  or  great,  of  which  the  union  is 
the  source,  springs  out  of  that  simple  basis  just  mentioned, 
which  is  the  foundation  of  the  constitution ;  and  that,  so  soon 
as  that  principle  ceases  to  be  recognized,  —  so  soon  as  the  con- 
stitution as  administered  ceases  to  be  the  constitution  which 
our  fathers  framed,  —  then  the  Union  is  in  fact,  to  all  intents 
and  purposes,  substantially  dissolved  already,  and  its  formal 
dissolution  becomes  a  mere  question  of  time. 

In  this  simple  proposition,  unless  I  greatly  err,  is  embodied 
the  deliberate  conviction  of  far  the  greater  number  of  our  own 
people.  The  feeling  of  attachment  to  the  Union  is  nowhere 
more  ardent  and  nowhere  more  general  than  in  these  Southern 
States.  We  love  the  Union  because  our  fathers  loved  it,  and, 
for  the  honor  and  reverence  in  which  we  hold  their  memories,  we 
would  cherish  it  as  they  cherished  it  before  us.  We  love  it, 
because,  with  a  faithful  observance  of  its  conditions,  it  is  a  fra- 
ternal bond  uniting  in  its  wide  embrace  a  vast  and  scattered 
family  whose  members,  however  remotely  separated  geographi- 
cally, are  still  one  in  origin,  one  in  language,  one  in  religion, 
and  one  in  their  undying  love  of  liberty.  We  love  it  because 
its  stability  secures  to  us  as  a  people  a  position  of  equality 
among  the  great  powers  of  the  earth,  and  enables  us  to  present 
to  other  powers  a  front  so  imposing  as  to  command  universal 
respect,  and  to  repress  the  spirit  of  aggression  from  without. 
And  we  love  it  because  we  believe  it  to  be  capable  of  securing 
to  ourselves  at  home  the  greatest  political  good  of  the  greatest 
number ;  and  because,  still  further,  in  the  depths  of  that  gloomy 
chasm  which  its  ruins  must  leave  behind,  we  know  not  what 
evils  may  lie  concealed.  If,  therefore,  this  beautiful  political 
structure  which  our  fathers  reared  is  destined  to  be  undermined, 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  257 

ours  will  not  be  the  sacrilegious  hands  which  shall  sap  its 
foundations.  That  practical  sundering  of  the  bonds  which 
unite  us  with  our  brethren,  in  which  the  real  dissolution  must 
consist  —  that  invasion  of  the  independence  of  sovereign  States 
and  of  the  principle  of  equal  rights,  which  treacherously  sub- 
verts the  constitution  while  professing  to  observe  it  —  that 
great  wrong  to  humanity  and  sin  against  God  will  never  be 
our  work.  But,  should  this  lamentable  consummation  be 
brought  to  pass  by  other  hands,  and  should  all  the  valuable 
ends  for  which  the  Union  was  established  be  successfully  frus- 
trated, then,  when  the  temple  of  our  constitutional  liberties 
shall  have  been  spoiled  of  all  its  treasures,  and  the  ark  no 
longer  reposes  in  the  sanctuary,  let  it  not  be  imputed  to  us  for 
faithlessness  or  impiety,  if  we  turn  our  backs  upon  the  dishon- 
ored edifice  and  refuse  to  worship  longer  within  its  desecrated 
walls.  It  will  not  be  we  who  will  have  dissolved  the  Union ; 
it  will  be  we  who  will  have  said,  The  Union  is  dissolved. 

It  would  have  been  equally  absurd  to  suspect  that  the 
preacher  who  had  uttered  these  sentiments  was  actuated 
either  by  disloyalty  to  the  Union  or  by  any  sort  of  hostility 
to  the  South  or  its  institutions.  Yet  it  would  hardly  have 
been  possible  to  frame  a  more  distinct  declaration  that  the 
triumph  of  the  Free  Soil  party  would  be  a  virtual  dissolu- 
tion of  the  Union,  which  the  South  would  only  have  to 
accept  and  pronounce.  In  the  success  of  that  party  he 
agreed  at  that  time  with  other  Southern  men  in  thinking 
that  the  dissolution  of  the  Union  would  be  virtually  accom- 
plished, so  that  it  would  remain  for  the  South  only  to  ac- 
cept the  fact  and  say,  "  The  Union  is  dissolved."  Never- 
theless, when  the  election  of  Mr.  Lincoln  took  place,  he 
did  not  consider  that  event  a  sufficient  reason  for  secession 
from  the  Union.  When  secession  followed,  he  deplored  it 
and  "hoped  against  hope"  for  better  times;  but  he  pub- 
licly acquiesced  in  it ;  and  after  he  had  retired  from  the 
University  of  Mississippi,  the  Board  of  Trustees,  in  a  re- 


258  MEMOIKS   OF 

port  to  the  Legislature  of  the  State,  pronounced  a  glowing 
eulogy  upon  him,  in  which  this  passage  occurs : 

Still  less  has  he  ever  mingled  in  political  strife;  yet  it  is 
known  that,  since  the  bitter  agitation  of  the  slavery  question 
at  the  North,  his  pen  has  been  wielded  with  effect  in  support 
of  the  institutions  of  the  South.  All  this,  unfortunately,  has 
not  exempted  him  from  imputations  growing  out  of  his  North- 
ern birth.  Yet  we  frankly  say,  if  there  is  any  ground  for  a 
charge  of  want  of  sympathy  with  ns  in  our  great  struggle  for 
Southern  independence,  we  have  never  seen  its  evidence. 

The  annoyances  attending  the  Branham  charges  against 
him  lasted  but  a  few  months,  and  whatever  evil  influences 
might  have  been  anticipated  from  them  were  completely 
dissipated  by  the  action  of  the  Board  of  Trustees,  which 
was  immediately  published  and  circulated  throughout  the 
State.  He  was  justified  by  good  men  everywhere,  as  a 
kind  and  just  master,  who  had  done  his  duty  in  pro- 
tecting his  helpless  servant  against  outrageous  and  brutal 
treatment  from  a  white  man  of  bad  reputation.  The 
feeling  of  Southern  gentlemen  was  well  expressed  in  a 
letter  written  to  him  by  Mr.  Jacob  Thompson : 

WASHINGTON,  D.  C.,  Feb.  19,  1860. 

DR.  F.  A.  P.  BARNARD  :  My  dear  Sir,  Nothing  could  have 
taken  me  more  by  surprise  than  the  difficulty  now  thrown  in 
your  way.  I  hoped  most  sincerely  you  would  find  the  time  to 
pass  this  way  on  your  way  from  Philadelphia.  I  wished  to 
hear  what  was  the  matter  now  up.  But  on  Friday  evening, 
Macon,  Mr.  Sheegog,  and  Mr.  Beanland,  from  Oxford,  arrived. 
I  heard  from  them  their  understanding  of  the  matter,  and  on 
their  version  of  the  story  I  am  wholly  at  a  loss  to  understand 
your  accusers.  Your  fault  is  that  you  received  information 
from  your  servant  girl  which  implicated  a  student,  and  you 
acted  on  this  information  to  reach  the  truth ;  and  this  is  set 
down  as  showing  your  free-soil  proclivities.  If  this  be  so,  I 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  259 

am  the  worst  free-soiler  in  the  State :  I  am  a  downright  aboli- 
tionist. No  man  strikes  my  negro  that  I  do  not  hear  his  story. 
I  will  listen  to  my  negroes'  grievances.  Before  God  and  man 
I  believe  this  to  be  my  duty.  No  man  has  a  right  to  touch 
him  or  her  without  my  consent,  and  he  who  would  not  do  the 
same  would  be  despised  by  every  man  in  Oxford. 

The  whole  matter,  as  these  young  men  relate  it  to  me,  is  so 
absurd  that  I  can  hardly  credit  their  report.  But  I  must 
insist  that  you  be  not  moved  by  these  things.  Have  moral 
courage  to  stand  by  your  post  and  do  your  whole  duty.  Such 
trials  will  only  prove  your  firmness  and  worth,  and  the  mis- 
chief will  fall  on  the  heads  of  your  adversaries.  Your  Friend, 

J.  THOMPSON. 

Soon  after  this  affair  Mr.  Jefferson  Davis  was  at  pains 
to  give  very  evident  expression  to  his  esteem  for  Barnard. 
In  the  early  summer  of  1860  he  visited  Oxford  to  deliver 
a  political  address. 

His  visit  [says  Barnard]  occurred  just  after  the  investiga- 
tion of  my  administration  of  the  affairs  of  my  office.  As  most 
of  the  principal  people  of  Oxford  called  on  Mr.  Davis  at  his 
hotel,  I  went  among  the  number.  They  arranged  themselves 
in  a  semicircle.  It  so  happened  that  I  was  in  the  middle  of 
the  crescent,  and  at  one  of  its  extremities  stood  the  man  who 
had  been  my  accuser.  Mr.  Davis  glanced  from  one  end  of  the 
row  to  the  other,  and  then,  instead  of  beginning  at  either  end, 
he  came  straight  to  me  in  the  middle,  and  offered  me  his  hand. 
The  incident  was  a  trifling  one,  but  to  the  company  there 
assembled  it  had  a  profound  significance.  The  next  day 
Mr.  Davis  called  upon  myself  and  my  wife  at  the  University. 
The  speech  he  made  to  the  people  during  his  visit  was  a 
singularly  eloquent  one.  As  there  was  no  hall  in  the  village 
large  enough  to  hold  his  audience,  he  spoke  in  the  public 
square.  From  the  flag-staff  in  the  enclosure  there  floated  over 
the  crowd  a  large  United  States  flag.  The  burden  of  his 
speech  was  the  usual  one  of  Southern  rights  and  Southern 
wrongs,  but  he  expressed  no  desire  to  break  up  the  Union. 
On  the  contrary,  he  professed  sincere  attachment  to  it,  pro- 


260  MEMOIRS   OF 

vided  that  under  it  his  fellow-citizens  could  enjoy  their  just 
rights.  Pointing  to  the  flag  above  him,  he  said,  "  I  slept 
under  that  flag  for  eleven  years,  and  why  should  I  desire  any 
other?"  Of  course  he  intimated  that  it  was  possible  that 
Mississippi  might  be  driven  out  of  the  Union,  but  he  sincerely 
hoped  no  such  disaster  might  arise.  His  speech  was  far  from 
being  a  decidedly  disunion  speech.  In  point  of  violence  it  fell 
far  short  of  many  which  I  heard  in  those  days  from  much 
inferior  men.  The  impression  made  upon  me  by  Mr.  Davis 
was  certainly  far  from  unfavorable,  and  personally  he  seemed 
to  be  a  very  amiable  man.  This  impression  was  afterwards 
very  much  strengthened  by  what  I  saw  of  him  in  Eichmond. 

Barnard  had  many  gratifying  assurances  of  the  undi- 
minished  confidence  of  his  Southern  friends,  but  he  still 
deeply  resented  the  unfounded  charge  of  secret  disloyalty 
to  the  Southern  people  whom  he  had  served  with  zealous 
fidelity  for  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  estimate,  or,  indeed,  to  overestimate,  the  bit- 
terness which  then  began  to  rankle  in  his  heart  against 
the  noisier  champions  of  Southern  principles  and  preten- 
sions. Until  the  Branham  investigation,  he  had  opposed 
them  with  impassioned  argument,  but  without  personal 
feeling ;  now  his  sense  of  personal  wrong  at  once  deepened 
and  justified  the  scorn  and  detestation  with  which  he 
regarded  them.  The  labors  and  trials  of  the  past  few 
years  had  somewhat  strained  him.  For  several  months 
he  had  been  extremely  irritable,  and  if  he  had  not  had 
an  opportunity  of  timely  relaxation,  the  Branham  affair 
might  have  made  him  morbid.  That  opportunity  came 
to  him,  however,  in  a  very  gratifying  proposal  from 
Professor  Bache  that  he  should  accompany  the  Astronom- 
ical Expedition  which  was  then  about  to  proceed  to 
Labrador.  He  accepted  the  invitation  gladly,  and  left 
Oxford  to  join  the  Expedition  shortly  before  the  annual 
Commencement  of  1360.  His  account  of  that  expedition 


FREDERICK   A.   P.   BARNARD  261 

may  be  best  given  in  his  own  language  though  with  some 
considerable  abridgment. 


In  180  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Science  appointed  a  committee  of  twenty  members  to  examine 
and  report  upon  the  history  and  result  of  the  American  Coast 
Survey.  The  chairman  of  this  committee  was  Judge  Kane  of 
Philadelphia  ;  but  on  his  death  a  few  months  later,  the  chair- 
manship was  transferred  to  me.  I  spent  a  good  deal  of  labor 
in  preparing  the  report  of  this  committee,  which  was  printed 
in  the  following  year,  and  was  so  satisfactory  to  Professor 
Alexander  D.  Bache,  the  distinguished  Director  of  the  Survey, 
that  he  became  from  that  time  forward  one  of  my  warmest 
and  most  serviceable  friends.  He  showed  his  friendship  in 
a  very  practical  way  when  the  outbreak  of  the  Kebellion  had 
left  me  stranded  with  no  apparent  means  of  support  ;  but  his 
kindness  did  not  wait  so  long  for  its  first  manifestation.  In 
1860,  when  it  was  proposed  to  send  an  expedition  of  American 
astronomers  to  Labrador  to  observe  the  total  eclipse  which 
occurred  in  July  of  that  year,  he  invited  me  to  join  the  party. 
In  order  to  accept  this  invitation  it  was  necessary  for  me  to 
leave  Mississippi  a  week  or  two  before  the  Commencement  at 
the  University.  I  obtained  leave  of  absence,  accordingly,  and 
reached  New  York  on  the  eve  of  the  day  appointed  for  sailing. 
Next  morning  I  repaired  to  the  steamer  which  was  lying  in 
the  harbor,  but  the  chief  of  the  party,  Professor  Alexander,  of 
Princeton,  did  not  make  his  appearance.  The  hour  for  sailing 
arrived.  Professor  Bache  said  to  me,  "  You  will  have  to  take 
the  chief  direction";  and  so  it  seemed  that  I  should  be 
obliged  to  do  ;  but  at  the  very  last  moment,  the  head  of  Pro- 
fessor Alexander  appeared  above  the  rail,  and  we  were  all  right. 
The  expedition  was  of  great  interest  to  me,  as  it  introduced 
me  to  various  and  interesting  meteorological  phenomena  of  the 
polar  seas,  including  magnificent  and  almost  nightly  displays 
of  the  aurora  borealis,  extraordinary  refractions,  duplications 
and  inversions  of  distant  objects,  and  any  number  of  icebergs 
of  most  picturesque  shapes.  At  one  time  I  counted  as  many 
as  forty  icebergs  in  the  field  of  vision  around  us.  Our  voyage 
extended  to  Cape  Chudleigh,  at  the  mouth  of  Hudson's  Strait, 


262  MEMOIRS   OF 

and  we  called  on  the  way  at  several  interesting  settlements  of 
Labrador  fishermen.  Our  passage  along  the  inhospitable 
Labrador  coast  was  not  without  its  perils.  That  coast  is 
continuously  rock-bound  from  the  Strait  of  Belle  Isle  to  Cape 
Chudleigh,  and  is  bordered  with  rocky  islets  which,  at  the 
indentation  of  the  coast  in  which  the  Moravian  settlement  is 
situated,  constitutes  a  perfect  archipelago.  Off  this  point  on 
our  outward  trip  we  were  menaced  by  a  storm,  and  our  captain 
thought  it  expedient  to  run  in  among  the  islands  to  find  a  safe 
refuge.  Late  at  night  we  cast  anchor  in  what  seemed  to  be  a 
favorable  retreat;  but  next  morning  when  we  attempted  to 
run  out  to  sea  again,  we  found  ourselves  involved  in  the  in- 
tricacies of  a  labyrinth  of  water-ways.  To  make  matters  worse, 
after  we  had  expended  some  hours  in  the  attempt  at  escape, 
we  ran  upon  a  reef,  where  our  steamer  hung  fast.  We  did  not 
spring  a  leak ;  but  in  spite  of  all  our  efforts  we  could  neither 
advance  nor  retreat.  The  captain  sent  out  a  kedge  anchor  far 
astern,  and  attaching  the  cable  to  our  windlass,  endeavored  to 
pull  the  ship  back;  but  could  not  stir  her  an  inch.  Drop- 
ping the  kedge  to  the  right  and  to  the  left,  he  found  that  he 
could  swing  the  vessel  on  its  centre.  All  our  hopes  now 
rested  upon  the  possibilities  of  the  tide.  In  certain  books 
the  tides  of  Labrador  were  represented  to  rise  thirty  feet  or 
more,  but  we  did  not  know  the  state  of  the  tide.  If  it  were 
full,  the  prospect  was  that  we  should  soon  be  left  stranded 
high  and  dry,  and  that  we  might  be  obliged  to  take  to  our 
boats  and  endeavor  to  look  up  the  Moravian  settlement,  with 
the  prospect,  if  we  should  find  it,  of  remaining  there  a  year  or 
two  before  we  could  be  relieved,  or,  if  we  should  fail  to  find  it, 
of  starving  on  the  rocks  of  Labrador !  There  was  an  anxious 
period  of  waiting,  during  which  I  kept  my  eyes  upon  some 
rocky  pinnacles  that  stood  a  little  above  the  surface  of  the 
water,  endeavoring  to  judge  by  their  apparent  enlargement 
or  diminution  whether  the  tide  were  rising  or  falling.  For  a 
long  time  —  it  seemed  to  me  distressingly  long  —  there  seemed 
to  be  no  change ;  but  by  and  by  the  rocky  points  appeared  to 
me  to  be  sensibly  diminishing.  It  was  true ;  the  tide  was  low 
and  was  just  on  the  turn.  After  the  flow  had  fairly  com- 
menced, the  ship  was  gently  lifted,  and  we  were  once  more 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  263 

free.  But  we  had  not  escaped  from  our  difficulties  ;  we  were 
still  involved  in  the  intricacies  of  the  archipelago.  Very  soon, 
however,  we  discovered  that  we  were  not  entirely  alone  in  the 
world.  At  a  distance  from  us  we  saw  a  moving  object,  which 
proved  to  be  a  native  Esquimau  in  his  kayak.  By  signs  we 
called  the  stranger  to  our  vessel.  He  looked  at  us  with  aston- 
ishment, but  readily  climbed  the  ship's  side  and  held  up  to  us 
a  string  of  fish  (dolphins,  the  sailors  called  them),  each  two  or 
three  feet  long.  He  was  disposed  to  give  them  to  us  very 
freely ;  and  the  captain  accepted  them.  In  turn,  he  wished  to 
give  something  acceptable  to  the  Esquimau,  and  offered  a 
bottle  of  whiskey,  which  the  man  slightly  smelled  and  put 
away  with  disgust.  The  captain  then  offered  him  sheets  of 
what  the  sailors  call  "  hard  tack/'  that  is  sea  biscuit  having 
about  the  consistency  of  granite.  This  the  man  seized  with 
great  delight  and  with  many  expressions  of  thanks.  We  con- 
cluded that  he  had  been  under  the  influence  of  the  Moravian 
missionaries,  and  our  conclusion  was  presently  confirmed  by  the 
fact  that  he  understood  some  words  of  German.  We  had  no 
German  scholar  on  board,  but  one  of  our  party  [Oscar  Lieber, 
son  of  Dr.  Francis  Lieber  of  Columbia  College]  had  a  slight 
knowledge  of  the  language.  Our  communications  with  the 
native,  however,  were  conducted  chiefly  by  signs ;  and  as  the 
captain  desired  to  get  out  of  the  archipelago,  the  Esquimau 
traced  a  map  with  water  on  the  top  of  a  sea  chest,  indicating 
the  course  we  ought  to  steer.  Our  visitor  then  departed  in  his 
kayak,  and  by  following  his  indications  we  found  ourselves  at 
sea  again. 

This  was  the  only  native  of  the  country  whom  we  saw 
unmixed  with  what  may  be  called  civilized  society ;  for  that 
term,  I  presume,  might  be  applied  to  the  communities  of  fish- 
ermen 011  the  coast  who  have  intermarried  with  the  native 
Esquimaux. 

Of  the  Esquimaux  who  had  married  with  whites  we  saw 
a  good  deal  in  the  fishing  settlements.  At  one  point,  called 
Domino  Harbor,  we  made  a  stop  of  two  days.  Our  steamer 
was  one  of  small  dimensions  and  was  incapable  of  carrying  a 
supply  of  coal  for  a  voyage  of  two  thousand  miles  and  back. 
In  going  out  we  therefore  made  a  stop  out  at  Sidney  in  Cape 


264  MEMOIRS   OF 

Breton,  where  we  took  in  a  supply  and  made  a  contract  for  an 
additional  supply  to  be  sent  to  meet  us  in  our  return  at  Domino 
Harbor.  We  accordingly  stopped  at  Domino  on  our  return 
and  met  our  supply  schooner  loaded  with.  coal.  We  reached 
Domino  on  a  Saturday  morning  and  received  our  supply  during 
that  day ;  but  we  did  not  leave  until  Monday  morning.  The 
appearance  of  Domino  Harbor  surprised  me  by  its  commodi- 
ousness  and  security.  It  had  the  appearance  almost  of  an 
artificial  dock  in  the  form  of  a  perfectly  regular  oblong  rec- 
tangle, half  a  mile  long  and  about  a  furlong  wide.  On  the 
banks  there  was  quite  a  village  inhabited  by  fishermen,  some 
of  whom  spent  their  winters  in  Newfoundland,  while  others 
remained  upon  that  desolate  coast  throughout  the  year.  Their 
principal  occupation  was  fishing,  but  they  also  practised  hunt- 
ing and  trapping  for  furs,  and  many  of  them  had  very  beauti- 
ful skins  for  sale.  The  skins  of  the  white  fox  were  especially 
beautiful,  being  of  snowy  whiteness.  Our  company  made  many 
purchases,  and  some  of  us  pretty  well  exhausted  our  funds  in 
doing  so.  One  would  hardly  have  supposed  that  coin  would 
be  esteemed  in  such  a  settlement,  but  we  soon  found  that  the 
value  of  a  dollar  was  quite  well  understood  by  those  simple 
half-savages.  We  found  also  that  they  had  decided  religious 
sentiments,  and  when  they  ascertained  that  there  was  a  clergy- 
man on  board,  they  insisted  that  I  should  preach  to  them. 
This  I  did  on  the  Saturday  night,  taking  for  my  text  "  Those 
who  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships  and  do  business  on  the  great 
waters,"  etc.  I  was  a  little  uncertain  about  my  psalmody,  not 
being  a  remarkable  vocalist  myself,  and  therefore  I  gave  out 
no  hymn ;  but  as  soon  as  the  sermon  was  concluded  some  tune- 
ful precentor  in  the  congregation  suddenly  broke  out  in  a  burst 
of  melody  which  was  promptly  taken  up  by  the  whole  congre- 
gation. 

Our  captain  had  resolved  to  set  sail  the  next  day  notwith- 
standing that  it  was  Sunday ;  but  the  whole  population  pro- 
tested. There  were  children  who  had  not  been  baptized,  and 
the  people  desired  to  avail  themselves  of  this  opportunity  to 
secure  a  proper  performance  of  that  rite.  Moreover,  one  of 
these  children  was  at  a  distance  and  had  to  be  sent  for.  The 
captain  was  prevailed  upon  to  delay,  but  the  child  did  not 


FKEDERICK  A.   P.   BAKNARD  265 

come.  On  Monday  morning,  when  the  impatience  of  the  cap- 
tain was  such  that  he  was  about  lifting  the  anchor,  suddenly 
a  group  of  boats  came  thronging  from  the  shore,  the  infant 
was  brought  at  the  eleventh  hour,  and  the  baptism  took  place, 
to  the  great  satisfaction  of  the  parents. 

During  the  Saturday,  while  the  coal  was  being  taken  on 
board,  I  went  out  with  a  party  of  fishermen  to  catch  cod.  The 
fishing  was  done  with  hook  and  line,  and  the  bait  was  a  small 
fish  which  is  caught  in  vast  numbers,  the  fishermen  dipping 
them  up,  I  believe,  in  buckets.  When  my  party  was  ready  to 
go,  it  was  discovered  that  the  bait  had  been  forgotten.  My 
companions  applied  to  the  nearest  boat,  which  had  a  sort  of 
well  in  the  middle,  filled  with  bait.  A  bucketful  was  immedi- 
ately dipped  up  out  of  the  well  and  handed  to  us.  I  proposed 
to  pay  for  the  supply,  but  our  neighbors  laughingly  refused  to 
receive  any  money  for  it.  When  we  had  reached  the  fishing- 
ground,  we  anchored  and  threw  out  our  lines,  and  the  voracity 
with  which  the  cod  took  the  hooks  was  astonishing.  The  bait 
was  scarcely  beneath  the  water  before  it  was  seized  and  swal- 
lowed, and  our  arms  were  tired  with  pulling  out  .the  endless 
succession  of  fishes.  On  returning  to  the  village,  I  wandered 
about  among  the  wretched  inhabitants,  and  could  hardly  under- 
stand how  it  was  possible  to  maintain  life  under  such  condi- 
tions. The  cottages  were  built  of  slender  fir  saplings  placed 
close  together  and  banked  with  earth  on  the  outside.  The 
roof  was  formed  in  like  manner,  so  that  the  cottages  looked 
rather  like  barrows  than  like  houses.  The  smallness  of  the 
timbers  was  not  a  matter  of  choice,  because  no  tree  on  that 
sterile  soil  attained  a  height  of  more  than  ten  or  fifteen  feet. 
The  village  was  thronged  with  dogs,  many  of  them  large  and 
handsome.  I  spoke  of  them  to  an  old  fisherman,  and  he  said, 
"  The  dog  is  the  Labrador  horse."  In  point  of  fact,  all  trans- 
portation is  managed  in  those  settlements  with  dogs  harnessed 
to  sledges.  Our  company  admired  the  dogs  exceedingly,  and 
we  bought  several.  I  myself  purchased  a  beautiful  young 
Newfoundland  pup  which  I  brought  with  me  to  New  York. 
At  that  season  [the  heat  of  summer]  I  did  not  dare  take  him 
to  Mississippi,  and  left  him  in  charge  of  a  workman  at  Fort 
Tompkins  on  Staten  Island,  where  my  brother  was  in  charge  of 


266  MEMOIRS   OF 

a  military  construction.  It  was  reported  to  me  that  the  dog 
died.  I  have  always  believed  that  he  was  stolen. 

While  we  were  at  Domino  we  had  a  curious  illustration  of 
the  depth  of  the  religious  sentiment  in  this  hybrid  population. 
Towards  night  on  the  Saturday  afternoon,  Mr.  Lieber  came 
across  a  fur  dress  which  an  Esquimau  woman  was  offering 
for  sale.  It  was  very  attractive,  and  Mr.  Lieber  desired  to 
buy  it ;  but  not  having  the  necessary  amount  of  money  with 
him,  he  said  to  the  woman,  "  Bring  it  over  to-morrow  morning 
to  the  ship  and  I  will  pay  you  there."  To  go  to  the  ship 
was  a  small  matter,  for  the  people  were  constantly  crossing 
the  harbor  in  their  boats ;  but  the  woman  answered  him,  "  I 
can't  sell  it  to-morrow ;  to-morrow  is  Sunday."  Mr.  Lieber, 
in  telling  the  story,  said  that  he  had  never  been  so  conscience 
smitten  in  his  life. 

I  was  very  much  interested  in  observing  the  process  of 
curing  fish.  The  drudgery  was  principally  done  by  the  women, 
who  removed  the  head,  the  viscera,  and  the  scales,  and  then, 
splitting  the  fish  completely  through,  spread  it  open  on  the 
sands  of  the  beach  to  dry.  The  whole  shore  was  covered  for 
miles  with  these  drying  fish,  which  were  turned  over  from 
time  to  time  to  make  the  exposure  more  thorough  and  com- 
plete. After  the  desiccation  was  sufficient  the  fish  was  gathered 
up  and  heaped  up  in  fish-houses,  which  were  built  on  the 
water's  edge  so  that  their  contents  might  be  readily  transferred 
to  vessels  coming  to  receive  them.  I  went  into  some  of  these 
fish-houses,  and  I  was  astonished  to  see  how  carelessly  the 
fishermen  walked  on  the  piles  of  fish,  without  any  considera- 
tion of  neatness.  The  fish  is  their  main  food  supply.  What- 
ever bread-stuff  they  use  must  be  brought  from  towns  in 
Newfoundland  or  on  the  Bay  of  St.  Lawrence,  and  of  course 
they  have  very  little.  They  are  about  as  badly  off  for  vege- 
tables, since  the  only  soil  they  have  is  but  a  few  inches  deep 
and  hardly  allows  them  to  raise  anything.  The  thinness  of 
their  soil  makes  the  burial  of  the  dead  a  matter  of  some 
dimculty.  They  told  me  that  they  had  to  transport  the  bodies 
of  their  dead  twenty  miles  along  the  coast  to  a  place  where 
they  could  be  decently  interred.  They  felt  their  religious 
privations  very  seriously.  They  told  me  that  they  were 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  267 

visited  once  or  twice  a  year  by  a  bishop  of  the  Anglican 
Church  from  Canada ;  but  as  they  were  inclined  to  dissenting, 
and  in  fact  to  Methodist,  sentiments,  that  was  not  very 
satisfactory  to  them.  Many  of  them  seemed  to  have  a  desire 
for  reading  matter,  and  I  resolved  that  I  would  send  them  a 
box  of  books  and  tracts  after  my  return  to  New  York,  —  a 
purpose  which  I  am  sorry  to  say  I  failed  to  fulfil. 

I  have  said  nothing  thus  far  of  the  scientific  object  of  our 
expedition  or  of  our  success,  which  was  very  imperfect.  The 
central  line  of  the  eclipse  which  we  had  been  sent  to  observe 
passed  slightly  to  the  south  of  Cape  Chudleigh,  and  as  we 
approached  the  line,  we  looked  out  for  some  convenient  land- 
ing place.  Near  the  coast  we  found  the  bottom  beneath  us 
so  rocky  and  irregular  that  we  were  obliged  to  proceed  very 
slowly.  In  fact,  for  some  distance  we  sent  a  boat  ahead  to 
sound  the  passage  for  us.  We  also  continually  threw  the 
lead  from  each  side  of  the  vessel  itself,  and  the  irregularity 
was  such  that  we  would  occasionally  find  the  bottom  at  a  few 
fathoms  on  one  side  and  no  bottom  at  all  on  the  other  side. 
After  some  hours  of  this  rather  hazardous  running,  we  dis- 
covered the  mouth  of  an  inlet  which  admitted  us  to  a  capa- 
cious bay  several  miles  in  depth  and  perhaps  a  mile  in  breadth, 
affording  us  a  secure  land-locked  harbor.  We  arrived  a  few  days 
before  the  eclipse,  landed  our  instruments,  and  pitched  our 
tents.  I  think  we  had  seven  telescopes  and  several  chronom- 
eters; and  besides  these,  we  had  a  set  of  instruments  for 
magnetic  observations  for  which  a  special  encampment  was 
made  apart  from  the  astronomical  camp.  We  had  also  a 
wooden  structure  intended  for  a  camera  obscura  on  a  large 
scale.  Several  days  and  nights  were  devoted  to  the  astronom- 
ical determination  of  our  position,  and  before  the  day  of  the 
eclipse  arrived  each  of  the  seven  members  of  the  astronomical 
corps  was  assigned  his  particular  duty.  When  the  expected 
morning  arrived,  we  were  grievously  disappointed  to  find  the 
sky  entirely  overclouded.  There  were  moments  when  the 
sun  seemed  to  be  about  to  come  out ;  but  it  never  did  shine 
clearly,  and  although  we  were  able  to  observe  one  of  the  in- 
ternal contacts,  the  main  object  of  the  expedition  was  entirely 
lost. 


268  MEMOIRS   OF 

Nothing  could  exceed  the  desolateness  of  the  country 
around  us.  The  whole  surface  was  covered  with  broken  rock, 
for  the  most  part  bare,  but  in  many  portions  overgrown  with 
heavy  moss  which  grew  with  great  luxuriance  in  the  brief, 
warm  summer.  It  formed  a  carpet  in  which  the  foot  would 
sink  ankle  deep  and  with  no  little  danger  of  being  pinched 
between  the  irregularly  placed  stones  beneath.  We  saw  no 
inhabitants,  although  one  of  our  parties  in  an  excursion  came 
across  a  deserted  Esquimau  hut  which  was  filthy  to  the  last 
degree.  We  saw  no  animals  except  here  and  there  a  seal 
swimming  in  the  waters. 

As  our  party  embraced  a  number  of  assistants  in  the  Coast 
Survey,  we  took  advantage  of  our  stay  in  our  harbor,  which 
we  named  "  Eclipse  Bay,"  to  make  a  hydrographic  survey  of 
that  convenient  haven,  thinking  that  it  might  be  of  some  use 
to  future  voyagers  on  that  coast.  A  lofty  peak  on  the  south 
side  of  the  harbor  we  named  "  Mount  Bache,"  from  the  Super- 
intendent of  the  Coast  Survey.  We  did  not  ascend  to  the 
summit  of  this  peak,  but  we  reached  a  height  from  which  we 
could  look  far  out  upon  the  ocean  and  could  see  immense  ice- 
floes, covering  many  square  miles  of  surface,  drifting  slowly 
down  from  Baffin's  Bay.  Considering  our  nearness  to  Green- 
land, we  had  a  strong  desire  to  run  across  to  Upernavik,  but 
we  were  obliged  to  deny  ourselves  this  gratification  for  two 
reasons  :  first,  our  supply  of  coal  would  probably  not  suffice  to 
last  us  till  we  could  reach  Domino  if  we  extended  our  voyage 
so  far  as  Greenland ;  and  secondly,  we  had  been  enjoined  to 
get  home  in  time  to  meet  the  American  Association  for  the 
Advancement  of  Science,  which,  in  1860,  was  to  hold  its  annual 
session  at  Newport,  Ehode  Island.  We  had  plenty  of  time,  as 
we  believed,  but  our  homeward  progress  was  unaccountably 
slow.  We  hardly  made  more  than  six  or  eight  knots  an  hour. 
The  cause  of  this  sluggishness  was  discovered  only  after  the 
ship  reached  New  York  and  was  put  into  dry  dock.  It  then 
appeared  that  a  timber  forming  a  portion  of  what  is  called  the 
"  false  keel "  of  the  vessel,  had  been  turned  around  on  a  central 
bolt  so  as  to  stand  at  right  angles  to  the  course.  In  this  posi- 
tion it  formed  a  steady  drag  upon  the  progress  of  the  vessel, 
and  lost  us  probably  two  or  three  days'  time  on  our  return. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  269 

An  accident  which  occasioned  us  a  very  serious  danger  hap- 
pened to  our  binnacle  also,  but  whether  at  the  same  time  or 
later  we  could  not  discover.  When  we  were  off  the  Nova 
Scotia  coast,  not  far  from  Cape  Sable,  we  were  enveloped  in  a 
fog  so  heavy  that  we  could  not  see  each  other  through  the 
ship's  length,  much  less  any  object  outside.  The  captain 
prudently  reduced  the  ship's  speed  till  it  scarcely  moved. 
While  thus  slowly  creeping  along,  we  felt  a  heavy  shock,  and 
it  was  perceived  that  the  bow  of  the  boat  had  struck  an  ab- 
solutely vertical  granite  cliff.  Fortunately  we  had  suffered  no 
serious  damage,  and  we  thought  it  best  to  lie  still  until  the  fog 
should  lift.  When  it  did  so,  we  discovered  that  we  had  run  in 
between  two  reefs  extending  on  each  side  of  us  out  into  the 
ocean,  so  that  there  had  been  hardly  more  than  space  enough 
for  the  ship  to  enter.  If  our  course  had  been  slightly  different 
either  way,  we  should  have  run  on  one  or  the  other  of  these 
reefs  and  been  completely  wrecked.  Our  running  ashore  at  all 
was  owing  to  the  twisting  of  our  binnacle,  in  consequence  of 
which,  relying  as  we  did  upon  the  compass  during  the  fog,  we 
had  run  many  miles  out  of  our  way,  and  were  close  on  shore 
when  the  captain  supposed  us  to  be  well  out  to  sea.  In  spite 
of  all  our  efforts  to  reach  Newport  before  the  adjournment  of 
the  meeting  of  the  Association,  we  did  not  arrive  until  just 
after  it  had  adjourned.  The  return  of  the  eclipse  expedition 
had  been  looked  for  in  that  session  as  an  event  of  the  greatest 
interest,  and  though  we  were  too  late  for  the  regular  meeting, 
most  of  the  members  were  still  in  town,  and  gave  us  a  very 
enthusiastic  reception  at  an  evening  meeting  which  was 
immediately  held. 

Professor  Alexander,  the  chief  of  the  expedition,  was  the 
retiring  President  of  the  Association,  and  he  delivered  an 
elaborate  address,  in  the  course  of  which  he  mentioned  some 
of  the  incidents  of  the  expedition.  It  appeared,  too,  that  in 
my  absence  I  had  been  elected  President  of  the  Association 
for  the  next  following  year,  and  of  course,  as  President-elect, 
I  was  called  out,  and  spoke  as  well  as  I  could  at  such  short 
notice.  As  the  meeting  for  1861  had  been  appointed  for  Nash- 
ville, Tennessee,  and  the  Civil  War  broke  out  before  that 
time,  the  meeting  was  indefinitely  postponed  by  the  standing 


270  MEMOIKS   OF 

committee,  and  the  Association  did  not  reassemble  until  1866, 
when  it  was  called  to  meet  at  Buffalo,  under  my  Presidency. 
Owing  to  this  accident  I  held  the  office  continuously  longer 
than  any  other  President.  During  the  following  year,  1867, 1 
was  absent  from  the  country  at  the  time  of  the  meeting,  and 
did  not  then  deliver  the  usual  retiring  address ;  but  in  1868, 
when  the  Association  met  at  Chicago,  I  was  called  upon  to  do 
it  and  performed  the  duty. 


FBEDERICK  A.   P.   BAKNAKD  271 


CHAPTER  XI 

Political  excitement  at  the  South—  The  delusion  of  peaceful  separation 

—  Barnard's  views  expressed  in  letters  to  a  friend  —  The  students  of 
the  University  enlist  —  Barnard's  resignation  is  not  accepted  —  Bar- 
nard at  the  Convention  of  the  Southern  Dioceses  —  Barnard's  resigna- 
tion accepted  —  Visits  military  schools  of  South  Carolina  and  Virginia 

—  Applies  to  Mr.  Davis  for  a  passport  —  On  the  fall  of  Norfolk  Barnard 
returns  to  the  North  —  Contrast  between  the  North  and  the  South  — 
Barnard  in  the  Coast  Survey  Service  —  Letter  by  a  refugee  —  Treason 
at  the  North  following  the  tactics  of  treason  at  the  South  —  Earnest 
support  of  the  administration  —  Two  letters  from  General  Sherman. 


his  return  to  Mississippi  after  the  Labrador  expedi- 
tion Barnard  found  the  State  in  a  blaze  of  political  excite- 
ment in  anticipation  of  the  result  of  the  presidential 
election.  Throughout  the  State  there  was  a  general  feel- 
ing that  the  election  of  Mr.  Lincoln  would  both  justify 
and  demand  a  disruption  of  the  Union.  But  there  were 
many  who  stoutly  maintained  that  it  ought  to  have  no 
such  effect.  They  did  not  believe  that  the  mere  election 
of  a  Republican  or  Free-Soil  President  would  create  a  con- 
dition of  things  which  would  require  a  dissolution  of  the 
Union,  and  still  less  did  they  think  that  the  equal  rights 
guaranteed  by  the  Constitution  would  be  so  impaired  by 
that  event  as  to  justify  the  Southern  States  in  pronouncing 
that  the  sacred  bond  of  the  Union  had  been  virtually  dis- 
solved. They  maintained  that  the  guarantees  of  the  Con- 
stitution could  not  be  held  to  have  been  overthrown  by 
the  mere  election  of  an  executive  who  would  be  abso- 
lutely powerless  in  the  presence  of  an  adverse  legislature 
holding  both  branches  of  Congress,  and  of  a  judiciary 
which  could  be  trusted  to  defend  the  Constitution  against 


272  MEMOIRS   OF 

all  invasion  even  by  the  combined  powers  of  a  President 
and  a  Congress.  The  event,  therefore,  which  Barnard 
had  admitted  would  not  only  justify  but  effect  a  dissolu- 
tion of  the  Union,  would  not,  in  their  opinion,  be  involved 
in  the  election  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  Even  after  the  election 
there  remained  a  strong  feeling  of  reluctance  to  proceed 
to  extreme  measures,  and  not  a  few  of  the  more  extreme 
party  began  to  doubt  whether  it  would  be  wise,  after  all, 
to  fulfil  the  threats  which  had  been  made  sincerely  enough 
during  the  heat  of  a  political  campaign.  When  Governor 
Pettus  announced  his  intention  to  summon  the  State  Legis- 
lature to  take  measures  for  calling  a  convention  to  adopt 
an  ordinance  of  secession,  experienced  politicians  greatly 
doubted  whether  such  an  ordinance  could  be  adopted  in 
the  State  of  Mississippi.  The  professor  of  law  in  the 
University  was  a  zealous  secessionist.  He  had  practised 
his  profession  in  the  courts  of  nearly  every  part  of  the 
State.  He  was  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  senti- 
ments of  the  people  and  had  expressed  his  own  both  freely 
and  strenuously  in  the  local  newspaper  at  Oxford,  of 
which  he  was  the  virtual  editor.  Yet,  when  the  intention 
of  Governor  Pettus  to  convene  the  Legislature  was  first 
reported  at  the  University,  Barnard  met  the  professor  of 
law  hurrying  home  for  the  purpose  of  writing  to  the 
Governor  to  forego  his  purpose.  The  only  effect  of  that 
step,  he  said,  would  be  to  reveal  the  weakness  of  the  party 
of  secession,  notwithstanding  its  apparent  strength.  He 
said  to  Barnard,  "  1  have  visited  every  part  of  this  State ; 
I  am  intimately  acquainted  with  the  sentiments  of  the 
people  everywhere,  and  I  am  perfectly  satisfied  that  it  is 
impossible  to  take  Mississippi  out  of  the  Union."  The 
Governor  persevered  in  his  purpose,  and  it  is  a  singular 
fact  that  every  member  of  the  Vestry  of  Barnard's  con- 
gregation voted  for  delegates  to  the  convention  who  were 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  273 

pledged  to  oppose  the  adoption  of  an  ordinance  of  seces- 
sion. But  the  opposition  was  quickly  and  easily  over- 
powered. Such  words  as  "  submissionist,"  and  even  the 
unendurable  epithet  of  "coward,"  were  applied  to  those 
who  hesitated  to  resist  and  resent  the  success  of  the  Free 
Soilers  —  who  were  always  classed  with  abolitionists  —  in 
gaining  possession  of  the  Executive  Department  of  the 
Federal  Government;  and  it  was  vehemently  proclaimed 
that  no  Southern  State  could  honorably  remain  in  a  Union 
whose  chief  executive  officer  had  been  elected  under 
pledges  to  use  his  official  power  in  the  impairment  of  the 
constitutional  rights  of  those  States.  In  the  strife  of 
tongues  Barnard  kept  silence,  but  he  did  not  share  in  the 
delusion  that  a  peaceable  dissolution  of  the  Union  was 
possible.  In  the  evening  of  the  day  on  which  the  ordi- 
nance of  secession  had  been  adopted  at  the  State  capital 
he  met  Mr.  J.  B.  De  Bow,  editor  of  The  Southern  Review 
of  New  Orleans,  who  had  been  editor  of  the  United  States 
Census  of  1850.  Mr.  De  Bow  said  that  he  had  been 
present  when  the  vote  on  the  ordinance  was  taken,  and 
that  it  had  been  a  very  touching  scene.  Old  men,  he  said, 
had  been  moved  to  tears.  Barnard  replied  that  they 
might  well  weep  on  such  an  occasion.  De  Bow  asked 
what  he  meant,  and  Barnard  answered,  "  I  mean  that  to 
plunge  a  country  into  war  may  well  be  a  cause  of  tears." 
"War!"  exclaimed  De  Bow,  "there  will  be  no  war." 
Barnard  rejoined  that  there  was  war  already.  "  What," 
he  asked,  "  is  the  ordinance  of  secession  but  a  declaration 
of  war  ?  "  "  That  is  all  nonsense,"  said  De  Bow.  "  We  are 
not  making  war.  If  there  is  a  war,  the  North  will  make 
war  on  us,  and  the  North  cannot  make  war  on  us  for 
three  good  reasons.  First,  she  has  no  motive  for  war ; 
her  interests  depend  on  peace  with  the  South  ;  she  lives 
by  her  Southern  trade,  and  she  will  submit  to  anything 


274  MEMOIRS   OF 

rather  than  lose  it.  Second,  she  has  no  means  to  make 
war  except  what  she  gets  by  preying  on  the  South,  and 
war  would  deprive  her  of  all  her  resources.  Third,  she 
can  get  no  men  ;  her  people  are  divided  ;  half  of  them 
are  ready  to  take  our  side  already.  If  there  is  war,  it  will 
be  between  two  Northern  factions,  and  blood  may  flow  in 
the  streets  of  New  York  and  Philadelphia,  but  there  will 
be  no  blood  shed  in  the  South."  As  Mr.  De  Bow  had 
had  better  opportunities  of  knowing  the  resources  of  the 
two  sections  than  any  other  man  in  the  country,  it  is  easy 
to  see  how  natural  was  the  delusion  of  the  masses  of  the 
Southern  people,  when  he  and  other  men  like  him,  on 
whom  the  people  depended  for  their  information,  were  so 
completely  and  so  sincerely  deluded  in  their  conception  of 
the  facts  of  the  case.  Barnard  was  not  deluded  in  the 
least.  At  the  time  of  secession  he  expected  war  as  its 
result.  As  a  consistent  Southern  Whig  he  did  not  now 
believe  that  the  only  cause  which  could  justify  secession 
had  occurred;  he  regarded  the  means  by  which  it  had  been 
precipitated  as  an  insane  and  treasonable  conspiracy  to 
constrain  the  people  to  a  course  which  their  love  of  coun- 
try must  have  made  repugnant  to  them,  and  which  was 
certain  to  be  ruinous  in  its  consequences.  His  own  love 
for  the  Union  remained  undiminished,  and  his  worship  of 
the  flag,  though  it  must  now  be  cherished  secretly,  was  as 
reverent  as  ever.  His  feelings  at  this  time  were  warmly 
expressed  in  a  letter  to  Miss  Gilliss,  a  daughter  of  Admiral 
Gilliss,  then  at  the  head  of  the  Naval  Observatory  of  the 
United  States,  who  had  sent  him  a  miniature  flag  of  the 
Union. 

UNIVERSITY  OF  MISSISSIPPI,  Feb.  19,  1861. 

MY  DEAR  Miss  GILLISS  :  My  gratification  was  greater  than  I 
know  how  to  express  in  receiving  your  charming  letter  of  the 
10th  instant,  with  its  beautiful  and  most  acceptable  inclosure. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  275 

I  shall  owe  the  post  office  a  new  grudge,  in  addition  to  the 
many  I  had  against  it  before,  for  having  consumed  nearly  a 
week  in  bringing  to  me  an  evidence  of  remembrance  so  well 
suited  to  throw  a  little  light  upon  the  gloom  of  my  miserable 
corner  of  secession dom.  It  is  true  that  a  badly  served  mail  is 
better  than  we  have  any  right  to  demand,  and  I  endeavor  to  be 
as  grateful  as  I  can  that  it  continues  to  bring  us  anything  at 
all.  I  thank  you  most  sincerely  and  from  the  bottom  of  my 
heart  for  the  sympathy  in  our  forlorn  condition  which  the  gift 
of  this  beautiful  little  badge  proves  you  to  entertain;  and  I 
shall  treasure  up  the  emblem  with  jealous  care,  not  only  in 
remembrance  of  the  giver,  but  also  that,  in  spite  of  the  revolu- 
tionary madness  which  has  blotted  out  the  glorious  stars  and 
stripes  from  this  Southern  sky,  I  may  have  the  satisfaction,  at 
least  in  private,  of  still  continuing  to  feast  my  eyes  upon  that 
cherished  flag,  which  will  ever  be  the  only  one  which  I  shall 
acknowledge  to  be  the  flag  of  my  country. 

Mrs.  Barnard  assumes  to  put  on  a  few  jealous  airs  upon 
the  occasion,  and  desires  me  to  say  that  she  intends  to  engage 
some  one  of  our  most  secessionist  young  ladies  to  make  me  a 
rosette  or  cockade  as  a  sort  of  counter-weight  to  this  gift.  I 
give  her  message,  but  I  assure  you  that  I  could  not  be  induced 
to  touch  one  of  those  treasonable  affairs,  not  if — no,  not  even 
if  —  you  were  to  offer  it  yourself.  I  am  for  the  Union,  first, 
last,  and  forever. 

The  elections  of  Virginia  and  Tennessee  have  put  a  great 
deal  of  heart  into  us  wretched  victims  of  a  folly  without  a 
parallel  in  history.  We  still  cherish  quite  a  bright  little  se- 
cret hope  of  recovering  our  position  again  in  the  Union  which 
has  wrought  for  us  so  many  blessings  and  so  little  of  harm. 
It  is  true  we  seem  now  to  be  pretty  far  gone  in  our  delirium 
as  a  people,  but  I  have  heard  occasional  utterances  from  our 
most  determined  revolutionists  which  may  fairly  be  interpreted 
to  indicate  a  willingness  to  listen  to  terms.  For  instance,  a 
member  of  the  Mississippi  Convention  assured  me  only  a  few 
days  ago  that,  were  the  Union  now  to  be  restored  unconditionally, 
the  South  would  have  gained  substantially  all  that  she  has 
been  contending  for;  that  is  to  say,  the  South  has  demon- 
strated to  the  North  by  her  determined  action  in  this  emer- 


276  MEMOIRS   OF 

gency  that  she  is  at  any  time  ready  to  maintain  her  rights  at 
the  point  of  the  bayonet,  and  to  the  extremity  of  dissolving 
the  Union,  if  necessary,  and  has  thus  put  an  effectual  curb  on 
the  aggressive  spirit  which  has  been  aiming  at  the  destruction 
of  her  institutions.  This  is  the  argument ;  if  the  secessionists 
are  satisfied  with  it,  I  am ;  but  in  point  of  soundness  of  logic, 
I  confess  its  force  has  failed  to  impress  me. 

The  events  attending  and  following  the  inauguration 
of  Mr.  Lincoln  at  Washington  did  nothing  to  calm  the 
fears  or  strengthen  the  enfeebled  hopes  of  men  like  Bar- 
nard. A  month  after  that  event  he  wrote  again  to  Miss 
Gilliss. 

UNIVERSITY  OF  MISSISSIPPI,  April  6,  1861. 

MY  DEAR  Miss  GILLISS  :  Some  two  or  three  weeks  ago 
I  met  with  a  trifling  accident  which  disabled  me  for  a  time 
from  any  considerable  use  of  my  eyes,  especially  from  writing. 
I  was  engaged  in  one  of  my  favorite  mechanical  operations  — 
working  at  the  lathe  —  when  a  minute  particle  of  metal  struck 
me  in  the  eye,  producing  no  great  pain,  and,  as  I  supposed  at 
the  time,  no  injury  worth  noticing.  In  the  course  of  the  next 
twenty-four  hours,  however,  an  inflammation  developed  itself 
which  for  a  time  gave  me  some  concern,  but  which  happily 
now  has  nearly  or  quite  subsided.  I  trust  you  will  pardon 
the  introduction  of  this  little  piece  of  personal  history,  which 
seems  necessary  to  account  for  my  dilatoriness  in  replying  to 
your  charming  letter  of  last  month. 

The  affairs  of  our  unhappy  country  and  the  indications  of 
a  still  further  disruption  of  its  distracted  elements  continue  to 
occupy  all  thoughts  with  us,  and  I  presume  with  you.  Since 
the  accession  of  the  present  administration,  my  hopes  for  a 
brighter  future  have  been  growing  daily  more  faint;  and  I 
cannot  but  be  compelled  sadly  to  admit  that  the  glory  of  the 
Union  has  departed  forever.  The  scene  which  Washington 
has  presented  through  the  month  of  March  is  one  which  no 
patriot  can  contemplate  without  a  sickening  feeling  of  disgust. 
Nothing  but  a  scramble  for  the  pickings  of  office,  nothing  but 
a  scene  of  selfish  strife  for  the  promotion  of  momentary  indi- 
vidual interests,  while  the  country  is  writhing  in  the  pangs  of 


FREDERICK  A.  P.   BARNARD  277 

dissolution,  and  the  noble  fabric  which  our  fathers  erected 
with  so  much  labor  and  care  is  crumbling  into  ruin.  We 
who,  in  the  South,  still  love  the  Union,  had  a  right  to  look  to 
Mr.  Lincoln  and  his  Cabinet  for  some  indications  of  a  policy 
which  might  strengthen  our  hands  and  aid  us  in  restoring  the 
integrity  of  the  nation.  They  have  given  us  nothing  of  the 
kind.  They  have  not  given  us  a  policy.  The  vacillation  con- 
cerning Fort  Sumter  is  at  once  contemptible  and  disgraceful ; 
and  the  delay,  either,  on  the  one  hand,  distinctly  to  avow  a 
policy  of  peace,  and  act  upon  it,  or,  on  the  other,  to  call  Con- 
gress together  and  demand  supplies  and  authority  for  waging 
war,  —  which  they  are  not  likely  to  get,  —  exhibits  an  inde- 
cision and  moral  weakness  which  must  soon  forfeit  to  them  all 
respect  at  home  and  abroad. 

Meanwhile  the  war  fever  was  spreading  rapidly  through- 
out the  South,  and  in  the  expectation  of  hostilities  at  Fort 
Sumter  and  Pensacola  thousands  of  the  flower  of  the 
Southern  youth  were  enlisting  in  the  ranks  and  offering 
their  services  by  companies  and  regiments  to  the  gover- 
nors of  their  several  States.  The  students  of  the  Univer- 
sity formed  themselves  into  a  military  company,  called 
the  University  Greys,  and  made  application  to  the  Gov- 
ernor to  muster  them  into  service.  Backed  by  Professor 
Lamar,  afterwards  Associate  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States,  Barnard  wrote  to  the  Governor, 
begging  him  not  to  comply  with  their  request.  His 
appeal  was  made  in  vain  ;  the  company  was  mustered 
in  and  was  soon  sent  to  the  front.  But  Barnard  was 
resolved  to  do  his  whole  duty  in  the  premises.  He  was 
not  willing  passively  to  allow  the  absolute  ruin  of  the 
University,  nor  was  he  willing  to  permit  scores  of  young 
men  and  boys  who  were  under  age,  and  for  whom  he  was 
largely  responsible,  to  be  betrayed  by  momentary  enthu- 
siasm into  an  enlistment  as  common  soldiers,  without  at 
least  invoking  the  intervention  of  their  parents  and  guar- 


278  MEMOIRS   OF 

dians.  To  them,  therefore,  he  addressed  a  circular  letter 
in  which  he  asked  them  to  authorize  him  to  demand  from 
the  Governor  the  discharge  of  their  minor  sons  and  wards. 
Like  his  appeal  to  the  Governor,  this  effort  was  made  in 
vain.  From  most  of  the  parents  and  guardians  of  the 
students  he  received  assurances  that  the  enlistment  of 
the  youths  was  sanctioned  and  approved  by  their  elders, 
and  in  the  few  instances  in  which  he  was  allowed  to 
claim  the  discharge  of  a  student,  the  purpose  was  not 
to  withdraw  the  youth  from  military  service,  but  merely 
to  facilitate  his  transfer  to  some  other  company  which  had 
been  raised  in  the  neighborhood  of  his  own  home.  The 
University  Greys  were  ordered  to  Pensacola.  On  the  re- 
moval of  the  Confederate  government  from  Montgomery 
to  Richmond,  they  were  ordered  to  Virginia.  They  suf- 
fered heavily  in  the  first  battle  of  Bull  Run,  and  early  in 
the  war  which  they  had  entered  so  lightly  many  of  them 
perished  of  camp  fever.  It  is  believed  that  very  few  of 
that  boyish  band  of  student  soldiers  lived  to  return  home 
after  General  Lee's  surrender. 

Thus  the  very  first  effect  of  the  secession  of  Missis- 
sippi which  fell  under  his  own  observation  was  the  suspen- 
sion, and  an  imminent  prospect  of  the  complete  ruin,  of 
the  great  work  to  which  he  had  devoted  all  his  energies. 
After  the  departure  of  the  University  Greys  not  a  dozen 
boys  were  left  at  the  University.  The  classes  were  com- 
pletely broken  up,  and  no  one  could  foresee  when,  or  in 
what  circumstances,  they  would  be  reorganized.  Shortly 
after  the  capture  of  Fort  Sumter  the  Trustees  were  con- 
vened in  special  session,  and  Barnard  sent  in  his  resignation. 
It  was  not  accepted.  The  Board  deputed  a  committee  of 
its  members  to  visit  him  and  request  him  to  withdraw 
it.  Notwithstanding  the  angry  conditions  of  the  hour, 
they  urged  their  conviction  that  there  would  be  no  serious 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  279 

war,  and  that  the  classes  of  the  University  would  in  all 
probability  be  reorganized  in  the  autumn.  They  reminded 
him  that  they  had  expended  large  amounts  of  money,  by  his 
request  and  under  his  advice,  for  the  prosecution  of  plans 
which  had  not  yet  been  realized,  and  they  insisted  that 
he  could  not  properly  leave  them  to  bear  responsibilities 
which  they  had  incurred  under  his  guidance.  They 
begged  him  at  least  to  retain  his  office  as  Chancellor  of 
the  University  until  it  should  be  morally  certain  that 
their  hopes  were  groundless,  and  promised  that,  in  the 
autumn,  if  it  should  then  appear  to  be  impossible  to  reopen 
the  institution,  they  would  accept  his  resignation.  With 
that  understanding  he  withdrew  his  resignation,  and  pre- 
pared to  spend  the  following  summer  as  quietly  as  he 
could. 

In  a  letter  to  Miss  Gilliss,  written  June  5,  1862,  after 
referring  to  the  interruption  of  the  postal  service,  he 
said  : 

I  have  little  to  say  which  would  not  be  saddening  instead  of 
cheering,  or  which  would  not  relate  to  a  subject  which  must 
for  the  present  be  tabooed  —  the  unhappy  state  of  the  country. 
That,  among  the  changes  which  our  national  misfortunes  have 
brought  with  them,  your  father  has  been  thrown  into  the 
position  which,  in  my  judgment,  he  ought  always  to  have  held, 
is  one  pleasant  subject  of  reflection  amid  the  many  that  are 
painful.  —  I  could  sincerely  wish  that,  since  you  must  suffer 
exile,  we  could  have  got  possession  of  you  down  in  this  distant 
corner  of  Secessia.  It  would  have  been  a  great  relief  to  the 
gloom  of  our  present  solitude. 

We  are  indeed  inhabitants  of  a  solitude.  Our  University 
has  ceased  to  have  a  visible  existence.  Its  halls  are  com- 
pletely deserted,  and  its  officers  are  without  occupation.  A 
large  proportion  of  the  students  have  yielded  to  the  prevail- 
ing military  mania  and  are  now  at  Pensacola  and  Harper's 
Perry.  Still,  we  do  not  expect  to  remain  suspended  indefi- 
nitely. We  shall  reopen  in  September.  In  the  meantime  we 


280  MEMOIRS   OF 

have  a  long  period  of  inaction  to  waste  amid  the  anxieties  of 
this  unnatural  war. 

I  expect  in  about  a  month  to  visit  Montgomery  as  a  member 
of  a  convention  to  consider  what  is  to  be  done  about  the  re- 
lations of  the  Church  in  these  dioceses  to  those  of  the  States 
still  in  the  Union.  I  am  greatly  unwilling  to  see  a  severance 
made  complete  between  them ;  and  yet,  as  the  constitution  of 
the  Church  embraces,  in  so  many  words,  the  dioceses  "  in 
the  United  States  of  America,"  we  become,  of  necessity,  sev- 
ered from  it  the  moment  our  political  severance  is  complete. 
I  cannot  but  hope  that  we  may  arrive  at  some  plan  of  union 
which  may  preserve,  in  all  particulars  substantially  unbroken, 
a  connection  which  has  so  long  and  so  happily  existed. 

I  continue  to  hope  against  hope  that  hostilities  may  soon 
cease,  and  that  we  may  once  more  be  restored  to  the  enjoy- 
ment of  those  blessings  of  peace  and  fraternal  intercourse  of 
which  we  only  know  the  value  now  that  we  know  what  it  is 
to  have  lost  them.  I  shall  not  dismiss  the  hope  that  I  may, 
at  some  not  very  remote  day,  have  the  pleasure  of  welcom- 
ing you  in  this  my  quiet  home. 

It  will  always  be  difficult  for  persons  who  are  not  inti- 
mately acquainted  with  the  state  of  feeling  in  the  South 
at  that  time  to  appreciate  the  mingled  sentiments  of  a 
man  in  Barnard's  position.  In  his  devotion  to  the  Union 
there  had  never  for  an  hour  been  the  slightest  faltering ; 
and  because  he  loved  the  Union,  he  had  all  along  opposed 
the  antislavery  agitation  which  he  knew  to  be  sapping 
the  foundations  of  the  Union  in  the  affections  of  the 
people  of  the  South.  For  the  institution  of  slavery,  in 
comparison  with  the  permanence  of  the  Union,  he  seems 
to  have  cared  nothing  either  way  ;  and  hence  he  was 
equally  indignant  at  the  Northern  agitators  who  were 
ready  to  imperil  the  Union  for  the  sake  of  hastening 
emancipation,  and  at  the  Southern  agitators  whom  he 
believed  to  be  plotting  the  disruption  of  the  Union  under 
a  pretext  of  resentment  at  Northern  aggression.  In 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  281 

presence  of  the  catastrophe  which  he  had  long  foreseen 
and  had  always  dreaded,  he  could  do  nothing  but  recog- 
nize and  accept  facts  which  he  deplored  as  national 
calamities.  When  the  cotton  States  seceded,  he  did 
not  seem  to  question  that  their  secession,  however  need- 
less or  unwise,  was  an  effectual  act.  It  grieved  him  to  the 
heart  to  think  that  "in  spite  of  its  revolutionary  madness  " 
it  had  "blotted  out  the  glorious  stars  and  stripes  from 
the  Southern  sky."  He  continued,  indeed,  to  "cherish  a 
bright  little  secret  hope  "  that  the  "  delirium  "  might  pass, 
and  that  the  Southern  States  "  might  recover  their  posi- 
tion in  the  Union  which  had  wrought  so  many  blessings 
and  so  little  of  harm."  A  month  after  Mr.  Lincoln's 
inauguration  his  hopes  for  a  brighter  future  had  grown 
daily  more  and  more  faint  until  he  mournfully  confessed 
himself  "  compelled  to  admit  that  the  glory  of  the  Union 
had  departed  forever."  In  looking  forward  to  the  Con- 
vention of  the  Southern  Dioceses  of  his  Church,  which 
was  to  be  held  at  Montgomery  in  the  month  of  July,  he 
had  clearly  accepted  the  dissolution  of  the  Union  as  an 
accomplished  fact.  Part  of  the  purpose  of  that  meeting 
was  "  to  consider  what  was  to  be  done  about  the  relations 
of  the  Church  in  these  dioceses  to  those  of  the  States 
still  in  the  Union."  His  earnest  wish  was  to  prevent  a 
complete  disruption  of  the  ecclesiastical  union  which  had 
existed  in  the  Episcopal  Church  of  this  country  ;  but  he 
fully  accepted  the  judgment  of  Southern  Churchmen  who 
held  that,  as  the  constitution  of  the  Church  itself  em- 
braced only  dioceses  "  in  the  United  States,"  the  Southern 
dioceses  became  of  necessity  severed  from  the  dioceses 
which  were  "still  in  the  Union,"  "the  moment  that  their 
political  severance  was  complete";  and  he  gave  no  inti- 
mation that,  in  his  belief,  their  political  severance  was 
not  complete.  When  hostilities  had  actually  begun,  he 


282  MEMOIRS  OF 

"  continued  to  hope  even  against  hope  "  that  they  might 
soon  cease  ;  but  it  does  not  appear  to  have  occurred  to 
him  that  they  would  ever  be  terminated  by  the  conquest  of 
the  South ;  and  in  his  place  as  a  preacher  of  the  Gospel, 
while  he  faithfully  exhorted  his  people  to  cherish  all 
charitable  feelings  towards  their  adversaries,  and  humbly 
to  repent  of  the  pride  which  he  told  them  had  been  their 
great  sin,  he  called  upon  them  to  recognize  the  Confeder- 
acy in  their  prayers.  In  a  sermon  delivered  at  Oxford 
on  June  13,  1861,  his  closing  words  were  these  : 

Let  me,  in  conclusion,  recall  your  attention  to  the  lesson 
which  it  has  been  my  object  this  evening  to  inculcate.  If 
God  has  visited  us  with  affliction,  let  us  remember  that  we 
have  shown  ourselves  but  parsimoniously  grateful  for  His 
abundant  mercies.  If  He  threaten  to  bring  us  low,  let  us 
bear  in  mind  that  the  loftiness  of  our  pride  has  merited  His 
just  displeasure.  Let  us  therefore  seek  His  face  with  deep 
contrition  and  humility  of  heart,  humbly  beseeching  Him  to 
make  our  present  trials  the  means  of  reclaiming  us  to  Him, 
and  of  making  us,  as  individuals  and  as  a  people,  more  faith- 
ful in  our  duty  than  we  have  ever  yet  been,  or  than  we  ever 
would  have  been,  had  we  not  been  afflicted.  And,  in  the 
words  of  our  most  worthy  and  well-beloved  Bishop  and  Father 
in  God,  let  us  entreat  Him,  "  in  His  infinite  wisdom  and  power, 
so  to  overrule  events,  and  so  to  dispose  the  hearts  of  all  en- 
gaged in  this  painful  struggle,  that  it  may  soon  end  in  peace 
and  brotherly  love,  and  lead  not  only  to  the  safety,  honor,  and 
welfare  of  our  Confederate  States,  but  to  the  good  of  all  His 
people  and  the  glory  of  His  great  Name,  through  Jesus  Christ 
our  Lord." 

It  is  easy  after  the  event  to  magnify  the  delusion  of 
the  people  of  the  South  in  underestimating  the  spirit  and 
resources  of  the  people  of  the  North  ;  but  it  is  quite  as 
easy  to  forget  that  no  one  at  the  North  imagined  that 
the  Southern  States  either  could  or  would  bring  such  im- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  283 

mense  resources  or  so  indomitable  a  spirit  to  the  support 
of  their  cause.  The  truth  is  that  no  one  on  either  side 
dreamed  of  the  magnitude  of  the  conflict  which  lay  before 
them.  No  one  imagined  for  a  moment  that  the  comba- 
tants would  be  numbered  by  millions  of  men  or  that  the 
cost  would  be  counted  by  thousands  of  millions  of  money. 
In  the  temper  which  existed  in  June,  1861,  if  either  side 
had  foreseen  only  the  destructive  energies  which  would 
be  wielded  by  the  other,  that  side  would  have  declined 
the  gage  of  battle.  In  June,  1861,  Barnard  saw  before 
him  every  day  more  than  sufficient  evidence  that  the 
South  both  could  and  would  maintain  its  cause  with  a 
devotion  which  would  make  the  war,  if  it  were  long  con- 
tinued, an  appalling  conflict.  He  knew  how  egregiously 
the  South  had  underestimated  the  power  of  the  North, 
but  he  also  knew  how  little  the  people  of  the  North  appre- 
ciated the  determination,  and  now  that  war  was  begun, 
the  unity,  of  the  people  of  the  South.  Southern  misap- 
prehension could  not  be  removed;  it  was  possible  that 
Northern  error  might  be  corrected,  and  that  peaceable 
negotiation  might  yet  take  the  place  of  bloody  and  de- 
structive strife.  It  was  probably  under  this  belief,  and 
with  this  hope,  that,  in  the  Convention  of  the  Church  at 
Montgomery,  Barnard  supported  a  resolution  which  con- 
tained an  outspoken  indorsement,  by  the  Church,  of  the 
political  changes  which  had  necessitated  the  meeting. 
The  resolution  was  not  approved.  The  representatives 
of  the  Church  felt  that,  whatever  might  be  their  views 
as  citizens,  they  had  no  right,  in  the  capacity  in  which 
they  were  then  assembled,  to  meddle  with  political  affairs 
further  than  to  recognize  the  course  of  events,  and  the 
resolution  in  support  of  which  Barnard  had  spoken  was 
laid  on  the  table  by  an  almost  unanimous  vote. 

The  news  of  the  first  battle  of  Bull  Run  reached  Bar- 


284  MEMOIRS  OF 

nard  while  he  was  visiting  friends  at  Tuskaloosa,  and 
his  hopes  of  peace  fell  to  zero.  The  resumption  of  his 
work  at  the  University  was  now  out  of  the  question. 
Secession  had  ruined  him.  The  plans  he  had  made  were 
frustrated.  The  work  he  had  done  was  wasted.  At  more 
than  fifty  years  of  age  he  was  left  without  means  of  sub- 
sistence, and  in  the  section  of  his  country  to  which  he 
had  given  nearly  quarter  of  a  century  of  unremitted 
labor  there  was  neither  place  nor  occupation  in  which  he 
might  earn  his  bread.  He  had  foreseen  that  all  this  might 
happen,  and  when  he  had  consented  to  withdraw  his  res- 
ignation as  Chancellor  of  the  University,  he  had  stipulated 
that,  in  case  it  should  ultimately  prove  to  be  necessary 
to  renew  it,  the  Trustees  would  secure  for  him  from  the 
Governor  a  passport  to  the  North,  where  it  would  be  pos- 
sible for  him  to  obtain  employment  in  his  profession  as 
a  teacher.  This  stipulation  had  been  willingly  agreed 
to ;  but  when  the  Board  met  in  September,  it  appeared  that 
it  could  not  be  fulfilled,  as  the  power  to  issue  passports 
was  now  in  the  exclusive  possession  of  the  Confederate 
government.  This  was  not  so  great  a  disappointment, 
however,  as  it  might  have  been  if  the  Trustees  had  not 
proposed  to  retain  his  services  in  another  capacity. 

The  Legislature  having  learned  at  a  recent  session  that 
the  University  had  been  practically  broken  up  by  the 
enlistment  of  the  whole  body  of  the  students,  had  passed 
an  act  authorizing  the  Trustees  to  establish  for  the  time 
being  a  military  school  for  boys  and  to  carry  it  on  in  the 
buildings  of  the  University.  In  accepting  Barnard's 
resignation,  the  Board  conferred  on  him  the  honorary 
degree  of  Doctor  of  Sacred  Theology  in  token  of  their 
high  esteem,  and  then  requested  him  to  do  them  the  ser- 
vice of  visiting  the  military  schools  of  South  Carolina 
and  Virginia,  and  to  report  to  them  on  the  methods  of 


FREDERICK  A.  P.   BARNARD  285 

organization  and  instruction  pursued  in  those  institutions. 
His  expenses  were  to  be  paid  by  the  Board,  of  course, 
and  his  salary  was  to  be  continued  until  his  report  should 
be  made.  When  he  should  return,  the  members  of  the 
Board  promised  to  use  their  united  influence  with  the 
Confederate  government  to  secure  him  a  passport  to 
the  North.  He  was  glad  to  render  the  desired  ser- 
vice, and  he  has  left  some  interesting  notes  of  his  tour 
of  investigation. 

I  accepted  the  commission  very  willingly,  and  made  a  visit 
to  the  South  Carolina  Military  School  at  Columbia,  proposing 
afterwards  to  visit  the  Virginia  Military  Academy  at  Lexing- 
ton. I  found  the  school  at  Columbia  still  in  operation,  not- 
withstanding the  excitements  of  the  war,  but  I  learned  that  the 
Virginia  school  was  suspended,  and  that  its  principal,  Colonel 
Francis  Smith,  who  was  an  old  acquaintance  of  mine  and  a 
classmate  of  my  brother's  at  West  Point,  was  somewhere  in  the 
Confederate  military  service.  I  thought  it  more  important 
to  see  Colonel  Smith  than  immediately  to  visit  his  school,  and 
as  I  did  not  know  where  he  was,  I  resolved  to  go  to  the  War 
Office  at  Bichmond  to  find  out.  I  learned  there  that  Colonel 
Smith  was  in  command  at  Craney  Island  in  the  James  Biver, 
at  the  mouth  of  Norfolk  Harbor.  I  applied,  therefore,  for  a 
permit  to  visit  the  Colonel  at  his  camp.  I  was  received  by 
him  with  great  courtesy,  and  he  showed  me  all  over  his 
defences.  The  island  was  very  strongly  fortified,  and  to 
my  civilian  eyes  seemed  impregnable.  The  Colonel  had  a 
very  lofty  wooden  tower  of  observation.  He  took  me  to  the 
top  of  it  and  gave  me  a  powerful  hand  telescope.  With  this 
instrument  I  began  sweeping  the  horizon,  and,  observing  a 
little  speck,  which  I  took  to  be  a  flag  on  an  adjacent  Confeder- 
ate fort  at  SewelPs  Point  a  mile  or  two  distant,  I  directed  my 
instrument  towards  that  object.  To  my  surprise  I  discovered 
it  to  be  the  stars  and  stripes  of  the  United  States  waving  over 
Fortress  Munroe,  at  a  distance  of  not  less  than  nine  miles ;  but 
as  it  was  a  very  large  flag  and  the  telescope  a  powerful  one, 
I  could  see  its  folds  with  the  utmost  distinctness.  The  sight 


286  MEMOIRS   OF 

thrilled  me  from  head  to  foot  with  a  feeling  I  had  never  before 
experienced.  I  had  not  seen  the  flag  then  for  many  months,  and 
I  was  beginning  to  despair  of  ever  seeing  it  again,  but  this 
brief  glimpse  of  it  seemed  to  give  me  new  life. 

Colonel  Smith  informed  me  that  in  order  to  secure  the 
information  I  desired  it  would  be  quite  necessary  for  me  to 
visit  the  Military  Academy  at  Lexington ;  and  in  order  to 
facilitate  my  studies  there  he  gave  me  letters  to  his  family 
and  to  his  adjutant,  who  still  remained  there  in  charge.  It  was 
necessary  for  me  to  return  to  Richmond  before  going  to  Lex- 
ington ;  and,  while  at  the  Capitol,  it  occurred  to  me  to  make 
a  personal  application  to  Mr.  Davis  for  a  permit  to  leave  the 
Confederacy.  I  therefore  called  at  the  executive  office  the 
morning  after  my  arrival  in  Eichmond,  and  found  myself  one 
of  a  throng  of  forty  or  fifty  persons  all  waiting  to  speak  to 
the  President.  After  a  detention  of  half  an  hour  in  the 
corridor  we  were  at  length  admitted  and  formed  a  long  semi- 
circle, myself  being  near  one  end.  Next  to  me  stood  one  of 
my  colleagues  in  the  University,  a  British  subject  who  had 
never  been  naturalized.  This  gentleman  presented  to  Mr. 
Davis  a  letter  from  the  British  Consul  at  New  Orleans  asking 
for  him  a  permit  to  cross  the  line.  The  President  very  cour- 
teously gave  him  a  reference  to  the  Secretary  of  War  and 
granted  his  request.  I  came  next.  Not  being  willing  to 
make  my  request  audibly  in  the  presence  of  so  many  good 
Confederates,  I  had  prepared  a  brief  statement  in  writing 
which  I  handed  to  Mr.  Davis  and  which  he  rapidly  glanced 
over.  Instead  of  replying,  he  said  to  me,  with  a  very  gracious 
smile,  "  Take  a  seat  on  the  sofa  here,  Doctor,  and  I  will  talk 
to  you  presently ! "  I  took  a  seat  accordingly,  and  Mr.  Davis 
proceeded  to  listen  to  the  rest  and  to  dismiss  them  successively 
until  no  one  remained  present  except  him  and  myself. 

He  then  sat  down  by  me  and  began  to  inquire  what  were 
my  motives  for  desiring  to  leave  the  Confederacy.  I  told  him 
that  he  was  very  well  aware  that  all  my  family  were  on  the 
other  side  of  the  line,  and  moreover  that  I  had  no  means  of 
making  a  subsistence  in  the  Confederate  States,  since  my 
occupation  was  completely  gone;  to  which  he  replied,  "Oh! 
I  will  find  you  occupation  enough;  you  are  the  very  man 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  287 

that  I  want  at  this  time."  He  then  proceeded  to  say  that  he 
desired  to  create  a  bureau  for  the  investigation  of  the  natural 
resources  of  the  Confederate  States,  both  vegetable  and  min- 
eral, in  short,  to  make  a  general  natural  history  survey,  and 
that  he  would  put  me  entirely  in  charge  of  that  work.  It 
was  in  vain  that  I  disclaimed  fitness  for  such  a  charge;  he 
was  unwilling  to  listen  to  a  refusal,  and  sent  a  messenger  to 
the  Chief  of  Ordnance,  Colonel  Gorgas,  to  explain  the  project 
to  me  more  in  detail.  In  the  mean  time,  Mr.  Meminger,  Secre- 
tary of  the  Treasury,  came  in  and  joined  with  the  President 
in  endeavoring  to  overcome  my  objections.  In  my  conversation 
with  Colonel  Gorgas  I  presently  perceived  that  the  thing  most 
immediately  desired  of  me  was  the  direction  of  works  for 
obtaining  sulphur  from  the  copper  sulphurets  of  western 
Tennessee,  and  the  production  of  sulphuric  acid  for  us  in 
preparing  fulminates.  Mr.  Davis  had  assured  me  that  my 
business  should  be  entirely  disconnected  from  military  opera- 
tions, but  these  statements  of  Colonel  Gorgas  showed  me  that 
the  representation  was  hardly  sincere. 

I  left  Mr.  Davis  without  promising  anything,  and  he  asked 
me  to  call  upon  him  at  his  house  in  the  evening.  I  did  so, 
and  we  had  a  long  talk  over  the  matter,  in  the  course  of  which 
I  assured  him  that  I  could  find  him  a  man  much  better  fitted 
for  the  proposed  work  than  I  was  myself,  and  that  if  he  would 
permit  me  I  would  nominate  such  a  man.  But  he  seemed  to 
be  determined  to  make  the  matter  personal  entirely,  and  when 
I  positively  refused  to  accept  office,  he  begged  me  to  defer 
my  decision,  to  reflect  upon  the  matter,  and  to  write  to  him. 
As  this  was  the  best  that  I  could  do,  I  left  him  and  proceeded 
on  my  mission  to  Lexington. 

At  Lexington  I  was  received  very  politely  by  Mrs.  Smith 
and  by  the  adjutant  in  charge  of  the  buildings,  and  this  gentle- 
man explained  to  me  with  great  particularity  all  the  details 
of  the  establishment.  I  then  went  on  by  stage  from  Lexington 
to  a  point  on  the  Memphis  and  Charleston  Railway,  after  which 
I  proceeded  rapidly  to  Jackson,  where  the  Trustees  of  the 
University  were  in  session.  I  made  to  them  a  written  report 
and  then  bade  them  my  final  farewell.  The  body  manifested 
a  very  sincere  regret  in  parting  with  me,  and  as  I  left  the 


288  MEMOIES   OP 

room  one  of  the  leading  members,  Judge  William  L.  Sharkey, 
one  of  the  ablest  and  best  men  I  have  ever  known,  followed 
me  into  the  corridor  and  expressed  in  the  strongest  terms  his 
deep  sense  of  the  loss  which  the  University  and  the  State  had 
suffered,  and  added  in  conclusion,  "I  look  upon  your  with- 
drawal as  nothing  less  than  a  grave  public  calamity."  Expres- 
sions of  this  kind  which  came  to  me  from  several  members  of 
the  Board  were  particularly  gratifying.  On  the  day  on  which 
my  resignation  at  Oxford  was  accepted,  Ex-Governor  McRae, 
who  had  been  Chairman  of  the  Board,  remarked  to  me:  "In 
parting  from  you  I  have  at  least  one  satisfaction  in  the  recol- 
lection that  I  have  always  voted  for  every  measure  which  you 
have  recommended."  After  the  war  was  over,  I  remember  a 
manifestation  of  feeling  by  Judge  Sharkey  which  was  equally 
gratifying.  Under  the  first  government  organized  in  Missis- 
sippi after  the  war,  Judge  Sharkey  was  elected  to  the  United 
States  Senate.  He  went  to  Washington,  but  was  not  allowed 
to  take  his  seat.  It  was  in  April,  1866,  I  think,  that  General 
Grant  was  presented  by  his  fellow-citizens  with  a  dwelling 
in  Washington  City,  and  a  large  party  were  assembled  in  that 
house  to  celebrate  the  occasion.  In  passing  about  from  room 
to  room,  I  entered  an  apartment  where  there  happened  to  be 
for  the  moment  no  other  company ;  but  just  at  that  moment 
from  a  side  door  Judge  Sharkey  entered  also.  He  approached 
me  impulsively  and  threw  around  me  his  arms,  expressing  the 
strongest  gratification  at  having  met  me  once  more. 

From  Oxford  Barnard  went  first  to  Tuskaloosa,  not 
wishing  to  be  exposed  to  the  dangers  and  inconveniences 
of  a  region  which  might  at  any  moment  become  a  scene 
of  military  operations,  but  he  did  not  remain  long  in 
Alabama.  After  storing  his  effects  in  what  he  vainly 
thought  would  be  a  place  of  safety,  he  and  Mrs.  Barnard 
betook  themselves  to  Virginia  and  lived  at  Norfolk  until 
the  capture  of  that  city  by  the  Federal  troops  in  the  month 
of  May,  1862.  Why  he  went  to  Norfolk,  and  how  he 
was  occupied  during  the  months  he  spent  there,  is  not 
known.  In  the  only  reference  to  the  subject  which  he  is 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  289 

known  to  have  made  it  seems  to  be  implied  that  he  used 
some  peculiar  means  (which  he  did  not  think  it  expedient 
to  tell)  to  find  a  way  to  reach  the  North  ;  but  the  event- 
ual opening  of  his  way  was  the  capture  of  Norfolk,  which 
he  could  hardly  have  been  an  agent  in  bringing  about. 

With  the  fall  of  Norfolk  Barnard's  life  at  the  South 
ended.  When  he  reached  Washington,  he  was  called  a 
"  refugee,"  and  somewhat  later,  he  applied  that  designa- 
tion to  himself.  In  the  sense  of  a  person  who  has  taken 
refuge  from  the  calamities  of  war  in  an  invaded  country, 
Barnard  was  a  refugee,  but  in  no  other  sense.  He  had 
been  subjected  to  no  sort  of  molestation;  he  had  been 
threatened  with  none,  and  there  was  no  reason  why  he 
should  apprehend  any.  He  was  not  suspected  of  disaffec- 
tion to  the  Southern  cause  or  the  Confederate  government. 
Some  of  the  highest  officers  of  the  Confederacy  were  his 
personal  friends.  He  enjoyed  the  confidence  of  Southern 
Churchmen  and  Southern  people  wherever  he  was  known. 
There  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  that,  in  his  heart  of  hearts, 
he  was  "  a  Union  man  " ;  but  he  had  behaved  with  such 
consistent  prudence  that  his  sentiments  exposed  him  to 
no  danger.  In  the  sense  of  a  person  who  flees  from 
danger  or  persecution,  Barnard  was  not  a  refugee,  and  at 
the  close  of  the  war  he  found  that  his  old  friends  at  the 
South  remained  his  friends  still. 

When  Dr.  Barnard  found  himself  within  the  Union 
lines,  whatever  doubts  he  might  have  entertained  of  the 
issue  of  the  struggle  between  the  sections  were  completely 
dissipated.  At  the  South  he  had  seen  a  lack  of  the  mate- 
rial of  war  and  of  the  necessaries  of  life;  at  the  North 
there  was  abundance.  At  the  South  there  were  neither 
factories  nor  skilled  workmen;  the  North  was  teeming 
with  productive  industries.  The  South  was  shut  in  from 
communication  with  the  rest  of  the  world,  while  every 


290  MEMOIRS   OF 

civilized  nation  on  earth  was  sending  into  Northern  ports 
an  abundant  supply,  not  only  of  commodities,  but  of  men. 
Every  day  of  the  war  was  a  drain  upon  the  resources  of 
the  South,  which,  if  long  continued,  must  inevitably  end 
in  exhaustion,  while  the  North  was  developing  unsus- 
pected powers  and  discovering  resources  of  inexhaustible 
wealth.  With  these  facts  before  him,  Dr.  Barnard  could 
no  longer  doubt  the  issue  of  the  conflict,  and  he  therefore 
held  that  a  speedy  termination  of  the  war,  whatever  pres- 
ent cost  or  suffering  it  might  entail,  would  be  as  real  a 
benefit  to  the  South  as  to  the  North.  He  forthwith  joined 
the  ranks  of  those  who  urged  that  the  war  should  be 
prosecuted  with  the  whole  energies  of  the  nation  and 
insisted  that  opposition  to  the  national  administration  on 
any  ground  whatever  was  nothing  less  than  treason.  Ani- 
mated with  these  sentiments,  he  called  with  Mrs.  Barnard 
to  pay  his  respects  to  Mr.  Lincoln.  When  he  reached 
the  White  House,  the  President  was  engaged  in  a  Cabinet 
meeting,  but  on  receiving  their  cards,  he  instantly  rose 
from  his  seat,  went  out  to  meet  them,  approached  them  with 
extended  hand,  saying,  "  Come  in ;  I  have  heard  of  you 
before  ;  come  right  in  here,"  and  so  introduced  his  guests 
without  ceremony  into  the  midst  of  the  assembled  Cabinet. 
Dr.  Barnard  would  have  been  glad,  of  course,  to  find 
work  in  his  own  profession,  but  for  a  time  none  could  be 
found,  and  for  want  of  other  occupation,  he  was  engaged 
for  a  time  in  reducing  the  observations  of  southern  stars 
which  had  been  made  by  Lieutenant  (afterwards  Captain) 
Gilliss  at  Santiago,  Chili,  as  Chief  of  the  American  Astro- 
nomical Expedition  of  1849-52,  which  were  then  in  prep- 
aration for  publication  by  authority  of  Congress.  While 
thus  occupied,  he  was  invited  by  his  friend,  Professor  A. 
D.  Bache,  Chief  of  the  Coast  Survey,  to  take  a  position 
in  that  service,  which  he  gladly  did.  The  duty  assigned 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  291 

to  him  was  the  direction  of  the  Map  and  Chart  Depart- 
ment, which  consisted  chiefly  in  superintending  the  pub- 
lication and  distribution  of  the  maps  and  charts,  but  an 
incidental  part  of  the  work,  which  for  a  time  occupied 
his  whole  energies,  was  the  preparation  and  publication 
of  war-maps,  illustrative  of  the  military  operations  in 
progress  in  different  parts  of  the  Union.  As  the  seat  of 
war  was  changed  from  day  to  day,  these  maps  were  cor- 
rected accordingly ;  and  as  their  value  depended  on  their 
prompt  appearance  after  every  new  movement,  they  re- 
quired constant  vigilance  and  great  activity  on  the  part 
of  the  director.  The  public  interest  in  the  progress  of 
the  war  caused  the  war-maps  to  be  highly  appreciated, 
but  there  were  few  who  knew  that  they  were  produced 
under  the  direction  of  a  Southern  college  president  who 
could  find  no  work  to  do  in  his  own  profession. 

In  the  latter  part  of  1863,  the  president  of  a  Western 
college  published  a  letter,  addressed  to  President  Lincoln, 
in  which  the  disasters  of  the  war  and  the  possibility  of 
defeat  for  the  Union  cause,  were  ascribed  to  the  weakness 
and  irresolution  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  It  was  on  this  occasion 
that  Dr.  Barnard  published  his  "  Letter  to  the  President 
of  the  United  States,  by  a  Refugee,"  of  which  mention 
has  been  made.  It  was  extensively  copied  in  the  news- 
papers and  was  widely  read ;  but  in  view  of  facts  of  very 
recent  date,  its  vehemence  must  be  admitted  to  have  been 
somewhat  excessive.  It  was  but  a  few  years  since  Bar- 
nard, himself  a  slaveholder,  had  indignantly  denied  the 
charge  that  he  was  "unsound  on  the  slavery  question," 
and  had  invited  the  Trustees  of  the  University  of  Missis- 
sippi, if  that  charge  could  be  sustained,  to  "  remove  him 
from  a  position  for  which  he  was  morally  disqualified." 
At  that  time  he  had  proved  by  the  evidence  of  men  with 
whom  he  had  lived  on  terms  of  intimacy  for  quarter  of  a 


292  MEMOIRS  OF 

century  that  lie  had  never  given  them  the  slightest  rea- 
son to  believe  that  he  disapproved  of  slavery.  It  might, 
therefore,  have  been  well  for  him  to  have  left  it  to  some 
other  man  to  denounce  "that  relic  of  primeval  barbarism, 
that  loathsome  monument  of  the  brutalities  of  the  ages 
of  darkness,  that  monster  injustice  —  cursed  of  Christian 
men  and  hated  of  God  —  domestic  slavery."  That,  how- 
ever, is  a  question  of  propriety  which  was  not  then  thought 
of,  and  of  the  remorseless  force  of  argument  and  invective 
with  which  he  pressed  the  charge  of  deliberate  treason 
upon  the  critics  of  the  administration  there  can  be  no 
question  at  all. 

He  told  how  he  had  witnessed  for  many  years  "the 
working  out  of  a  giant  conspiracy  by  which  an  entire 
people  were  betrayed  against  their  will  into  overt  acts  of 
treason  and  open  war  upon  their  country,  its  flag  and  its 
government."  He  had  "observed,  during  the  period  of 
an  entire  generation,  the  careful  preparation  of  the  mines 
and  magazines  by  which  it  was  designed  to  blow  up  the 
entire  political  fabric."  He  maintained  that  the  disunion 
sentiment  at  the  South  had  been  wholly  factitious  and 
was  still  largely  fictitious. 

I  have  seen  [he  said]  the  light  of  hope  die  out  in  hundreds 
of  bosoms  where  the  love  of  country  long  survived  the  inaugura- 
tion of  the  rebel  reign  of  terror.  I  have  seen  the  weak,  or 
the  timorous,  or  the  base,  on  the  most  frivolous  of  pretexts, 
repudiating  the  sentiments  which  they  have  always  before  pro- 
fessed, and  with  the  vociferous  zeal  of  recent  converts  —  a  zeal 
always  most  vociferous  when  the  conversion  is  pretended  and 
the  convert  a  hypocrite  —  mouthing  upon  the  corners  of  the 
streets  the  creed  of  treason,  which,  in  spite  of  their  ostenta- 
tious apostasy,  they  yet  loathed  in  their  heart  of  hearts.  And 
I  have  seen  even  the  men  of  sternest  principle  —  men  who 
through  months  of  anguish  cherished  the  hope  that  the  gigantic 
wickedness  which  had  deprived  them  of  a  country  would  yet 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  293 

be  stricken  down  by  the  hand  of  the  government  —  in  despair 
of  relief,  and  in  obedience  to  what  they  esteemed  an  inexorable 
destiny,  giving  in  at  length  their  adhesion  to  the  tyranny  they 
could  not  resist,  and,  hopeless  and  heart-broken,  bowing  their 
necks  to  the  yoke. 

In  the  criticism  of  Mr.  Lincoln  and  the  administration, 
Dr.  Barnard  could  see  nothing  else  than  the  same  "  leaven 
of  treason  at  work  in  the  heart  of  loyal  communities " 
which  at  length  precipitated  the  present  conflict. 

The  demon  of  rebellion  [he  said]  is  lurking  in  secret  places 
among  our  own  valleys  and  hills,  and  the  hour  may  at  any 
moment  sound  when  the  crimson  deluge  which  has  already 
rolled  over  Virginia,  and  Tennessee,  and  Mississippi,  and 
Arkansas,  and  Missouri,  shall  burst  upon  the  States  north  of 
the  Ohio.  .  .  .  The  dark  conspirators  are  too  wary  to  declare 
their  purpose  in  advance.  They  seek  to  lull  suspicion  by 
setting  themselves  up  as  the  foremost  champions  of  the  Con- 
stitution they  aim  to  subvert.  They  denounce,  with  furious 
violence,  measures  absolutely  indispensable  to  preserve  the  gov- 
ernment from  overthrow.  They  demand  for  rebels  in  arms 
every  right  to  which  loyal  citizens  are  entitled.  According  to 
them,  it  is  unconstitutional  to  touch  the  property  which  gives 
to  insurgent  traitors  the  power  to  be  mischievous.  It  is  uncon- 
stitutional to  restrain  traitors  among  ourselves  of  the  liberty 
which  they  employ  in  organizing  bands  to  obstruct  the  move- 
ments of  national  troops,  even  on  their  way  to  defend  the 
national  capital.  It  is  unconstitutional  to  aid,  by  legislation, 
a  loyal  State  in  ridding  itself  of  a  political  ulcer  whose  rotten- 
ness, where  it  has  been  allowed  to  run  its  course,  has  corrupted 
the  whole  body  politic,  and  has  nearly  cost  the  nation  its  life. 
It  is  unconstitutional,  in  short,  to  do  anything  to  save  the  Con- 
stitution :  and  nothing  is  constitutional  but  the  right  to  sub- 
vert the  Constitution.  Thus,  open  and  violent  resistance  to 
the  authorities  which  the  Constitution  itself  has  created,  is 
inculcated  as  the  legitimate  and  proper  and  even  obligatory 
means  of  upholding  the  Constitution :  and  revolution  is  urged 
as  the  only  possible  means  of  saving  the  country. 


294  MEMOIRS   OF 

Precisely  the  same  machinery  [he  continued]  is  being 
employed  by  Northern  traitors  which  was  successful  in  the 
South.  State  authorities  are  set  up  against  the  government 
of  the  whole  country.  Local  state  pride  is  enlisted.  Sectional 
jealousies  are  enkindled.  A  conflict  is  kept  up  which  is 
designed  to  last  long  enough  to  generate  a  degree  of  exaspera- 
tion among  the  people  sufiicient  to  render  the  experiment  safe ; 
and  then,  suddenly,  the  central  power  is  to  be  defied,  and  the 
revolution  made  complete.  This  method  of  inaugurating  re- 
bellion is  the  most  insidiously  dangerous  that  was  ever  con- 
trived. It  apes  the  forms  of  legitimate  proceeding  to  an  extent 
which  imposes  on  law-abiding  citizens  who  presently  find  them- 
selves rebels  without  their  own  consent.  And  it  is  a  species 
of  rebellion,  strong  in  possession  from  the  start,  of  all  the  regu- 
lar organization  of  an  established  state.  Any  unhappy  recusants 
among  a  people  so  betrayed  are  deprived  of  even  the  equal 
chance  which,  in  rebellions  elsewhere,  belong  to  the  persistently 
loyal,  of  striking  for  their  independence ;  for,  without  organiza- 
tion themselves,  they  are  surrounded,  from  the  earliest  moment, 
by  an  organized  police  who  repress  the  first  indication  of  dis- 
affection by  arrests,  imprisonments,  and  executions  under  the 
forms  of  law,  or  are  subjected  to  the  violence  of  mobs,  who 
proceed,  with  the  encouragement  of  the  authorities  themselves, 
to  hang  or  mutilate  without  any  regard  to  law  at  all. 

And  here  we  have  the  obvious  and  rational  explanation 
of  a  political  phenomenon  which  has  excited  the  special  admi- 
ration of  Mr.  Eussell  and  other  foreign  observers ;  viz.  the 
singular  and  beautiful  unanimity  which  the  insurgent  people 
have  displayed  in  their  ill-omened  cause.  Such  observers  have 
even  remarked,  apparently  without  drawing  the  unavoidable 
inference,  that  this  unanimity  extends  no  less  to  the  immi- 
grants and  adventurers  from  foreign  lands,  too  recently 
arrived  in  the  country  to  be  able  to  comprehend  in  the  least 
the  alleged  causes  of  grievance,  than  to  the  people  who  are 
native  and  to  the  manor  born.  Indeed,  it  may  be  safely  said, 
that  there  never  occurred  a  rebellion  since  history  began  in 
which  the  insurgent  chiefs,  from  the  earliest  hour  of  their 
usurped  authority,  were  able  to  command  a  machinery  so 
comprehensive,  so  resistless,  so  thoroughly  effectual  for  secur- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  295 

ing  unanimity  among  their  wronged  and  betrayed  victims, 
as  the  Southern  conspirators  found  ready  made  to  their 
hands  in  the  State  organizations.  Even  before  the  melan- 
choly farce  of  secession  had  been  enacted  in  any  single  State, 
these  authorities  were  thoroughly  prostituted  to  the  uses  of 
the  conspirators.  Citizens  who  still  loved  their  country  were 
menaced  and  insulted,  in  many  instances  assaulted  with  actual 
violence;  yet  they  dared  not  appeal  to  the  ministers  of  the 
law  for  protection,  for  they  knew  too  well  that  law  had  no 
longer  any  protection  for  them.  On  the  other  hand,  the  ruffi- 
ans who  thus  commenced  the  work  of  preparing  a  unanimous 
people  in  advance  of  the  hour  appointed,  were  as  entirely 
untrammelled  by  any  fear  of  consequences  to  themselves,  as 
the  roving  bands  of  Bedouins  who  plunder  helpless  travellers 
in  the  desert. 

Again  and  again  Dr.  Barnard  insisted  that  the  danger 
of  the  nation  lay,  not  in  the  strength  of  the  South,  but 
in  treason  at  the  North.  That,  he  said, 

is  the  danger  of  the  time.  Our  armies  were  never  so  strong 
as  they  are  now.  Our  navy  never  was  so  efficient.  If  the 
operations  in  progress  are  slow,  they  are,  nevertheless,  sure. 
The  resources  of  the  rebels  have  been  stretched  to  the  point 
of  exhaustion.  Every  man  and  boy  capable  of  bearing  arms 
among  them  has  been  driven  into  the  field  by  the  most  sweep- 
ing and  merciless  conscription  the  world  ever  saw.  The  natu- 
ral sources  of  nitre  which  exist  within  their  borders  are  capable 
of  but  a  limited  supply,  and  yield  probably  at  present  not  a 
tithe  of  what  they  need ;  while  a  blockade,  more  severe  than 
ever  before,  effectually  neutralizes  the  efforts  of  foreign  sym- 
pathizers for  their  relief.  It  is  morally  impossible  that  we 
should  fail,  from  this  time  forward,  steadily  to  gain  upon  the 
insurrection  until  it  is  effectually  crushed  out,  extinguished, 
dead,  and  buried.  But  this  implies  and  requires  that  while 
our  armies  are  busy  in  the  field,  and  our  navy  along  our  coast 
and  rivers,  pushing  back,  inch  by  inch,  the  rebel  battalions, 
and  extending  steadily  the  jurisdiction  of  the  legitimate  gov- 
ernment over  reconquered  soil,  we  should  not  permit  a  new 


296  MEMOIRS   OF 

rebellion  to  burst  forth  in  their  rear,  to  break  up  their  base 
of  operations,  and  cut  off  their  sources  of  supplies. 

For  the  difficulties  of  the  time  Barnard  maintained  that 
the  administration  could  not  be  held  to  account. 

The  situation  of  things,  Mr.  President,  is  not,  in  my  view, 
one  for  the  evils  or  dangers  of  which  —  and  they  are  certainly 
grave  —  you  can  justly  be  held  responsible;  nor  are  they  evils 
or  dangers  which  it  would  appear  to  be  quite  in  your  power 
to  control.  They  are  evils  and  dangers  which  can  only  be 
removed  or  neutralized  by  the  earnest  efforts  of  good  men  and 
loyal  men  everywhere  to  expose,  disarm,  and  trample  under 
foot  the  treason  which  is  lurking  even  in  the  capitals  of  loyal 
States,  watching  the  favorable  moment  to  betray  the  sacred 
cause  of  humanity  and  of  liberty  in  its  own  home.  If  all  such 
men  will  but  realize  the  gravity  of  the  crisis,  and  simply  acquit 
themselves  of  their  duty,  the  symptoms  in  the  political  sky, 
which  now  so  justly  excite  anxiety  and  alarm,  will  speedily 
disappear.  If  they  will  not,  it  passes  human  prescience  to 
tell  in  what  condition  another  twelvemonth  may  find  our 
unhappy  country. 

If  Northern  and  Western  treason  were  to  be  success- 
ful, Dr.  Barnard,  in  the  following  passage,  anticipated  the 
verdict  of  history  which  in  that  case  must  be  rendered : 

The  year  1862  opened  auspiciously  for  the  cause  of  the 
Union.  Its  arms  were  everywhere  successful  —  everywhere 
its  flag  advanced.  Disastrously  defeated  on  the  banks  of  the 
Cumberland  and  Tennessee,  the  rebels  hastily  withdrew  from 
all  their  advanced  posts  in  the  West,  and  fell  back  to  the 
borders  of  the  State  of  Mississippi.  The  important  city  of 
Nashville  fell.  Most  of  the  important  towns  and  harbors  of 
the  Atlantic  seaboard  and  of  the  Gulf  were  captured  and  held 
by  the  Federal  forces.  The  great  navy-yards  of  Norfolk  and 
Pensacola  were  recovered.  The  Union  flag  waved  once  more 
over  New  Orleans.  The  whole  Mississippi  River,  with  the 
exception  of  a  single  point,  passed  under  the  complete  control 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  297 

of  the  Federal  flotillas.  In  view  of  these  multiplied  disasters 
the  rebels  were  seized  with  dismay.  Hopeless  discouragement 
appeared  in  every  countenance.  Their  wretched  people,  left 
to  themselves,  would  speedily  have  abandoned  the  conflict. 
But  the  leaders,  rendered  desperate  by  the  urgency  of  the 
crisis,  resisted  with  the  obstinacy  of  men  who  see  the  gallows 
staring  them  in  the  face.  They  resorted  to  a  conscription 
sweeping  and  merciless  to  a  degree  unknown  in  all  the  history 
of  tyrannies.  They  pursued  and  punished  the  disaffected  with 
a  vindictiveness  which  appalled  and  crushed  out  opposition. 
Thus  insubordination  was  promptly  checked,  and  their  rapidly 
recruited  armies  soon  found  themselves  numerically  superior 
to  the  forces  opposed  to  them.  Then,  in  turn,  the  Federals 
were  at  some  points  driven  back.  A  series  of  disasters  in 
Virginia  unreasonably  discouraged  a  portion  of  the  American 
people,  and  furnished  to  secret  sympathizers  with  the  rebel- 
lion, of  whom  there  were  always  many  in  the  loyal  States,  a 
favorable  opportunity  to  excite,  by  all  the  insidious  arts  which 
demagogues  know  how  to  employ,  discontent  with  the  admin- 
istration. It  was  not  very  difficult  to  mould  a  popular  chagrin, 
not  unnatural  under  public  reverses,  into  disaffection  toward 
the  men  who  were  at  the  head  of  public  affairs;  nor  very 
much  more  so  to  turn  against  the  government  itself  the  dis- 
affection which  was  at  first  directed  toward  men.  Accordingly, 
although  the  President,  by  wise  and  prudent  measures,  soon 
succeeded  in  correcting  all  the  evils  which  had  accrued  from 
previous  disasters,  and  had  so  ordered  affairs  as  to  insure, 
beyond  reasonable  doubt,  the  early  and  complete  triumph  of 
the  Union  arms,  yet,  precisely  at  this  critical  juncture,  his 
plans  were  totally  disconcerted  and  his  power  completely 
paralyzed  by  a  new  rebellion  suddenly  outbursting  in  the 
Northern  States.  The  remainder  of  the  history  is  soon  written. 
Civil  war  presently  raged  from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the 
other.  The  East  was  arrayed  against  the  West,  and  a  party 
in  the  West  was  in  secret  alliance  with  the  South.  The  posi- 
tion of  the  Union  armies  in  the  Southern  States  became  most 
critical.  They  fell  back,  closely  followed  by  the  Southern 
insurgents.  Washington  was  lost.  The  central  government 
was  broken  up.  The  Union  was  practically  dissolved.  Soon, 


298  MEMOIRS   OF 

in  the  confusion  which  followed,  the  component  elements  of 
this  once  magnificent  nationality  became  so  bitterly  and 
irreconcilably  hostile  to  each  other  as  to  render  recon- 
struction hopeless,  and  thus  the  greatest  republic  of  ancient 
or  modern  times  miserably  perished. 

The  letter  concluded  as  follows: 

If,  Mr.  President,  the  record  of  our  downfall  is  to  be  written, 
it  will,  as  I  most  sincerely  believe,  be  written  in  terms  like 
these.  But  I  will  not  yet  believe  that  it  is  to  be  written  at  all. 
My  faith  is  yet  strong  in  the  virtue  of  the  people.  If  it  were 
equally  strong  in  their  vigilance,  or  in  their  zeal  in  the  cause  in 
which  they  have  so  much  at  stake,  I  should  have  no  misgivings. 
Still  hope  predominates  over  apprehension ;  and  when,  to  hu- 
man view,  the  clouds  around  us  seem  darkest,  my  trust  is  in 
God.  Surely  He  cannot  permit  this  giant  iniquity  to  triumph ! 
Surely  He  will  reward  our  patience  and  our  perseverance  at 
last.  Surely  the  time  cannot  be  distant  when  He  will  restore 
to  us  the  blessings  of  peace ;  and  along  with  peace  will  give  us 
back  our  country,  and  our  whole  undivided  country. 

From  the  time  of  the  publication  of  this  letter,  Dr.  Bar- 
nard was  a  marked  man.  His  appointment  to  some  per- 
manent position  of  honor  and  usefulness  at  the  North  was 
assured;  and  on  the  resignation  of  President  King,  he  was 
elected  President  of  Columbia  College.  The  following 
letters  from  General  Sherman  will  show  that  while  he  was 
vigorously  and  even  vehemently  maintaining  the  cause  of 
the  Union  at  the  North,  he  was  not  forgetful  of  his  old 
and  tried  friends  at  the  South : 

HEADQUARTERS,  15th  ARMY  CORPS. 
Camp  on  river  18  miles  from  Vicksburg,  July  28,  1863. 

PROFESSOR  P.  A.  P.  BARNARD,  Coast  Survey  Office,  Wash- 
ington, D.  C. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND  :  On  my  return  from  Jackson  I  found  many 
letters,  and  yours  of  July  8  among  the  number.  That  you  should 
have  associated  my  name  with  the  great  result  achieved  in  re- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  299 

ducing  Yicksburg,  and  driving  out  of  Mississippi  the  army  of 
Johnston,  has  given  me  more  real  pleasure  than  the  plaudits  of 
a  million  of  the  crowd.  The  appreciation  of  one  who  knows, 
one  who  feels  the  importance  of  an  event  such  as  has  recently 
transpired,  is  what  I  am  proud  of.  Well  do  I  remember  you 
and  your  talented  and  pure  minded  brother,  as  also  your  wife, 
with  whom  I  would  not  have  dared  [?]  even  a  mere  acquaintance, 
and  I  assure  you  that  last  November,  when  I  rode  through  the 
grounds  of  the  College  at  Oxford,  I  thought  of  you  and  asked 
where  you  had  lived  and  thought  I  saw  the  traces  of  your  life 
in  the  Observatory,  of  which  I  remember  you  spoke  at  the  time 
we  were  travelling  down  that  road  which  I  have  just  destroyed 
root  and  branch. 

My  own  head  and  heart  have  been  so  full  of  the  importance 
to  us  as  a  people  and  nation  of  the  Great  Mississippi,  that  I 
have  been  blinded  to  all  else,  and  now  that  it  is  once  more  free 
to  the  navigation  of  the  world,  I  feel  like  sinking  down  into  a 
quietude  more  like  that  of  a  recovery  from  a  long  period  of 
intoxication.  I  followed  Johnston  to  Jackson,  drove  him  across 
the  Pearl,  and  knowing  the  arid  nature  of  the  stretch  to  Merid- 
ian, I  let  him  go,  pursued  by  the  fears  of  a  following  army. 
But  the  truth  is  that  our  men,  from  long  service  in  trenches, 
have  become  apathetic  and  listless,  and  must  have  rest. 

We  are  now  encamped  in  shady  groves  near  clear  water, 
along  the  Big  Black,  just  above  where  it  is  crossed  by  the  rail- 
road. Our  ranks  are  thinned  by  the  effects  of  battle  and  cli- 
mate, and  I  hope  our  Government  will  not  relax  its  efforts  in 
consequence  of  recent  successes,  but  fill  up  our  ranks  and  let 
us  push  on  to  a  conclusion.  We  must  succeed,  for  '  tis  not  pos- 
sible that  the  beautiful  fabric  of  government  erected  by  our 
forefathers  should  tumble  into  anarchy  or  be  rent  by  schism. 
I  fear  Anarchy  more  than  Eebellion.  Our  tendency  has  been 
towards  universal  freedom,  license,  and  anarchy.  This  war  may 
be  designed  not  only  to  vindicate  the  strength  of  the  National 
Government,  but  to  satisfy  our  people  that  all  must  submit  to 
the  Laws,  absolutely  and  implicitly ;  that  unless  we  must  obey 
the  law,  no  matter  how  apparently  tyrannical,  we  may  be  forced 
to  choose  another  more  exacting  and  cruel  Tyrant  as  a  master. 
All  will  still  work  well  if  we  can  maintain  discipline  in  our 


300  MEMOIRS   OP 

ranks,  and  I  am  working  for  that  as  much  if  not  more  than 
mere  success  over  the  open  avowed  enemy. 

For  your  kind  letter  I  thank  you,  and  will  ever  feel  recom- 
pensed in  knowing  that  notwithstanding  the  abuse  of  the  dirty 
whelps  of  newspaper  scribblers  who  profess  to  make  public 
opinion,  I  enjoy  the  respect  of  such  men  as  Professor  and  Gen- 
eral Barnard. 

In  some  haste  from  press  of  business, 

(signed)  W.  T.  SHERMAN,  Major  General. 


HEADQUARTERS,  15  ARMY  CORPS. 

Camp  on  Big  Black,  Sept.  14, 1863. 

PROFESSOR  F.  A.  P.  BARNARD,  Coast  Survey  Office,  Wash- 
ington, D.C. 

DEAR  SIR  :  Be  kind  enough  to  acknowledge  to  Professor 
Bache  receipt  from  me  of  a  copy  of  his  Historical  Sketch  of 
the  Progress  of  this  Rebellion,  or,  rather,  of  the  recovery  of 
Rebel  Territory. 

Our  troops  have  since  unopposed  visited  Harrisonburg  and 
Monroe  on  the  Washita.  Steele  is  moving  on  Little  Rock.  I 
doubt  if  opposition  be  made  there.  Shreveport  is  the  stra- 
tegic centre  of  the  Trans-Mississippi,  and  we  operate  to  a  dis- 
advantage till  the  high  waters,  when  we  can  make  short  work 
of  the  Red  and  Arkansas  River  Districts. 

I  think  we  must  secure  the  Line  of  the  Alabama  next,  and 
then  connect  with  Rosecrans. 

Mr.  Marshall  has  come  to  Vicksburg.     I  have  not  yet  seen 
him,  but  expect  to  in  a  few  days.     Who  in  Jackson  would 
likely  know  of  your  friend  Hilgard  ? 
Yours  truly, 

(signed)  W.  T.  SHERMAN,  M.  G. 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD  301 


CHAPTER  XII 

A  sketch  of  the  history  of  Columbia  College  —  First  mention  in  the 
records  of  Trinity  Church,  New  York  —  Bishop  Berkeley  —  Lotteries 
for  the  founding  of  a  college  —  Dr.  Johnson  appointed  President  — 
First  matriculation  of  students  in  1754  —  The  Royal  Charter  granted 

—  Opposition  to  the  Charter  —  Trinity  Church  conveys  land  to  the 
corporation  of  King's  College  —  The  dread  of  a  Church  establishment 

—  The  College  seal  —  The  foundation  stone  of  the  College  buildings  laid 

—  First  Commencement  in  1758  —  Mr.  Cooper  elected  President  in 
1763  —  Grant  of  land  in  Gloucester  County  and  how  it  was  lost — A 
grammar  school  established — Foundation  of  the  New  York  Hospital — 
Condition  of  the  College  in  1773  — Political  controversies  —  Dr.  Cooper 
sails  for  England  —  Rev.  Benjamin  Moore  Praeses  pro  tempore  —  The 
College  buildings  occupied  by  troops  —  Suspension  of  the  College  from 
1776  to  1784  —Organization  of  the  University  of  the  State  of  New  York 

—  Separate  organization  of  Columbia  College  —  The  first  Trustees  — 
Organization  of  the  Board  in  1787  — Dr.  W.  S.  Johnson  chosen  Presi- 
dent —  The  faculties  of  Arts  and  of  Medicine  —  Library  increased  — 
College  faculty  enlarged  —  James  Kent,  Professor  of  Law  —  Reduced 
means  and  their  consequences  —  Dr.  Wharton  of  Philadelphia  elected 
President,  1801 — Bishop  Moore  on  December  31st  of  the  same  year 
appointed  to  the  same  office — A  new  charter  obtained  in  1810 — Bishop 
Moore  resigning,  Rev.  William  Harris  is  elected  President  and  Rev. 
Dr.  John  M.  Mason  Provost  in  1811 — The  Medical  School  is  incor- 
porated with  the  College  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons  in  1813 — The 
Botanic  Gardens  granted  to  the  College  in  1814  —  History  and  value 
of  the  grant  —  In  1816  Dr.  Mason  resigns,  and  the  provostship  is  abol- 
ished —  Mr.  James  Kent  is  reappointed  Professor  of  Law  and  delivers 
lectures  which  were  afterwards  published  as  commentaries  —  Grammar 
school  established  —  Hon.  William  A.  Duer,  LL.D.,  succeeds  Dr.  Harris 
as  President,  1829  —  A  double  course  of  studies  introduced  in  1830  and 
discontinued  in  1843 — Fiftieth  anniversary  celebrated  1837  — Nathan- 
iel F.  Moore,  LL.D.,  succeeds  President  Duer,  1842  —  The  study  of  Ger- 
man and  elocution  —  Charles  King,  Esq.,  LL.D.,  succeeds  Dr.  Moore 
as  President,  1849  —  Emeritus  professors  —  Plans  for  a  system  of  post- 
graduate instruction  —  The  College  removed  in  1857  to  the  buildings 
formerly  occupied  by  the  New  York  Institution  for  the  Deaf  and  Dumb 

—  Plans  for  parallel  course  of  study  —  Establishment  of  the  Law 
Schools  in  1858  —  A  School  of  Mines  projected  in  1863  —  Election  of 
Dr.  Barnard  to  succeed  President  King,  1864. 


302  MEMOIKS   OF 

THE  history  of  Columbia  College  has  yet  to  be  written. 
An  outline  of  its  origin  and  progress,  by  President  Moore, 
was  printed  in  1846,  and  was  continued  to  1869  by  the 
Rev.  Beverly  R.  Betts,  Librarian  of  the  College.  From 
these  and  other  sources,  Professor  J.  H.  Van  Amringe 
has  compiled  an  "  Historical  Sketch  of  Columbia  College 
in  the  City  of  New  York,  1754-1876,"  to  which  we  are 
indebted  for  the  greater  part  of  the  information  contained 
in  the  present  chapter. 

KING'S  COLLEGE 

From  an  address  delivered  before  the  Alumni  of  Colum- 
bia College  by  C.  C.  Moore,  we  learn  that  the  earliest  inti- 
mation of  a  design  to  establish  an  institution  of  the  higher 
learning  in  the  City  of  New  York  is  contained  in  the 
records  of  Trinity  Church,  from  which  it  appears  that, 
as  early  as  1703,  "the  Rector  and  Wardens  were  directed 
to  wait  upon  Lord  Cornbury,  the  Governor,  to  know  what 
part  of  the  King's  farme,  then  vested  in  Trinity  Church, 
had  been  intended  for  the  College  which  he  designed  to 
have  built."  The  inference  from  this  record  would  seem 
to  be  that  the  foundation  of  a  college  had  been  contem- 
plated at  the  time  of  the  conveyance  of  the  King's  farm 
to  Trinity  Church,  and  that  Trinity  Church  was  under- 
stood to  hold  some  part  of  that  tract  of  land  in  trust  for 
that  purpose.  The  laudable  desire  of  the  corporation  of 
Trinity  to  discharge  the  trust  which  had  been  committed 
to  it  was  not  at  that  time  gratified.  In  1729,  during 
Bishop  Berkeley's  residence  in  this  country,  it  may  have 
been  temporarily  revived ;  for,  after  Berkeley  had  failed 
in  his  endeavor  to  found  a  college  in  Bermuda,  he  would 
gladly  have  renewed  it  in  "  some  place  on  the  American 
continent,  which  would  probably  have  been  New  York  "  ; 
but  it  is  not  known  that  any  practical  steps  were  taken  to 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  303 

promote  his  object,  and  there  is  no  record  of  any  further 
agitation  of  the  subject  during  the  next  seventeen  years. 

In  1746,  however,  an  act  was  passed,  and  received  the 
Governor's  assent,  "for  raising  the  sum  of  ,£2,250  by  a 
public  lottery  for  this  colony,  for  the  encouragement  of 
learning,  and  towards  the  founding  of  a  College  within 
the  same,"  and  on  August  23d,  1749,  Bishop  Berkeley 
wrote  to  Dr.  Johnson,  then  residing  at  Hartford,  Con- 
necticut :  "  For  the  rest,  I  am  glad  to  find  a  spirit  towards 
learning  prevail  in  these  parts,  particularly  New  York, 
where  you  say  a  college  is  projected,  which  has  my  best 
wishes." 

The  first  lottery  having  been  successful,  others  were 
authorized  for  the  same  object,  and  in  November,  1751, 
their  proceeds,  amounting  to  £  3,443  18s.,  were  vested  in 
ten  Trustees,  of  whom  one  was  a  Presbyterian,  two  were 
members  of  the  Dutch  Reformed  Church,  and  seven  were 
members  of  the  Church  of  England,  some  of  the  seven 
being  also  vestrymen  of  Trinity  Church.  On  the  8th  of 
April,  1752,  Trinity  Church  offered  to  convey  to  the 
Trustees  "any  reasonable  quantity  of  the  Church  farm 
(which  was  not  let  out),  for  erecting  and  use  of  a 
College."  It  was  probably  contemplated  from  the  first, 
that  the  College  which  was  thus  to  be  endowed  with  a 
portion  of  the  lands  of  Trinity  Church,  should  be  in 
some  distinctive  way  connected  with  the  Church  of 
England,  but  nothing  of  that  kind  appears  in  the  offer 
made  by  the  Rector  and  Vestry  of  Trinity,  nor  in  the  re- 
port thereon  which  was  made  to  the  Assembly  two  years 
afterwards.  As  soon,  however,  as  it  became  known  that 
the  Trustees  intended  to  obtain  a  Royal  Charter  for  the 
College,  the  popular  apprehension  of  anything  in  the 
nature  of  a  Church  establishment  in  the  province  occa- 
sioned a  violent  opposition  to  the  measure. 


304  MEMOIRS   OF 

On  November  22d,  1753,  nearly  a  year  before  the 
Charter  was  granted,  and  eighteen  months  before  it  was 
delivered,  the  Trustees  invited  the  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel 
Johnson,  of  Stratford,  to  accept  the  Presidency  of  the 
College.  His  salary  as  President  was  to  be  <£250,  which 
the  Trustees  acknowledged  to  be  inadequate,  but  they 
intimated  that  the  Vestry  of  Trinity  Church  would  in 
some  way  make  an  addition  to  the  amount,  and  in  the 
month  of  January,  1754,  he  was  informed  that,  in  case 
of  his  acceptance,  the  Vestry  of  Trinity  had  agreed  to 
call  him  as  an  assistant  minister.  After  some  considera- 
tion, Dr.  Johnson  went  to  New  York  and  entered  upon 
the  duties  of  the  Presidency  about  the  month  of  June. 
Meanwhile,  on  the  16th  of  May,  about  a  month  after 
his  arrival  in  New  York,  a  draft  of  the  proposed  Charter 
was  read  at  a  meeting  of  the  Trustees,  and  a  formal 
protest  against  it  was  offered.  It  was  approved,  never- 
theless, and  the  Trustees  not  only  proceeded  with  their 
application  for  the  Charter,  but  gave  public  notice  of  an 
examination  of  candidates  for  matriculation.  At  this 
first  examination,  which  was  held  in  the  first  week  of 
July,  1754,  the  following  eight  students  were  admitted : 
Samuel  Ver  Planck,  Rudolph  Ritzema,  Philip  Van  Cort- 
landt,  Robert  Bayard,  Samuel  Provoost,  Thomas  Marston, 
Henry  Cruger,  and  Joshua  Bloomer.  The  instruction  of 
these  young  freshmen  was  begun  by  Dr.  Johnson,  in  a 
schoolhouse  belonging  to  Trinity  Church,  on  July  17, 
1754. 

The  Royal  Charter  constituting  King's  College  was 
granted  and  passed  the  seals  on  October  31,  1754.  It 
appointed,  as  Governors  of  the  College,  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  and  the  first  Lord  Commissioner  for 
Trade  and  Plantations,  who  were  empowered  to  act  by 
proxy;  the  Lieutenant- Governor  and  Commander-in- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  305 

Chief  of  the  Province  of  New  York;  the  eldest  Coun- 
cillor, the  Judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Judicature, 
the  Secretary,  the  Attorney-General,  the  Speaker  of  the 
General  Assembly  and  the  Treasurer  of  the  Province ; 
the  Mayor  of  the  City  of  New  York ;  the  Rector  of 
Trinity  Church;  the  Senior  Minister  of  the  Reformed 
Protestant  Dutch  Church,  the  Ministers  of  the  Ancient 
Lutheran  Church,  of  the  French  Church,  and  of  the 
Presbyterian  Congregation,  in  the  City  of  New  York; 
and  the  President  of  the  College ;  all  these  ex  officio, 
and  together  with  them,  four  and  twenty  of  the  prin- 
cipal gentlemen  of  the  city,  namely,  Archibald  Kennedy, 
Joseph  Murray,  Josiah  Martin,  Paul  Richard,  Henry  Cru- 
ger,  William  Walton,  John  Watts,  Henry  Beekman,  Philip 
Van  Planck,  Frederick  Philipse,  Joseph  Robinson,  John 
Cruger,  Oliver  De  Lancey,  James  Livingston,  Esqs.,  and 
Benjamin  Nicoll,  William  Livingston,  Joseph  Read,  Na- 
thaniel Marston,  Joseph  Haynes,  John  Livingston,  Abra- 
ham Lodge,  David  Clarkson,  Leonard  Lispenard,  and 
James  De  Lancey,  the  younger,  Gentlemen. 

Though  the  Charter  was  granted  in  October,  1754,  the 
opposition  to  it  was  so  violent  that  it  was  not  delivered 
to  the  members  of  the  new  corporation  for  more  than 
six  months.  In  a  letter  to  Bishop  Sherlock  which  was 
written  on  the  very  day  of  its  delivery,  Dr.  Johnson  said : 

I  humbly  thank  your  Lordship  for  the  most  kind  regard  you 
express  towards  me,  in  view  of  my  undertaking  the  care  of 
this  young  College,  which  I  hope  will  live,  in  spite  of  the 
most  virulent  opposition  it  meets  with.  The  Charter  at  last 
passed  the  seals  in  October,  while  I  was  returned  into  the 
country.  But  the  clamor  was  so  great  that  there  were  some 
alterations  in  the  draught  after  I  went  away,  for  which  I  am 
very  sorry,  and  particularly  that  the  Bishop  of  London  was 
left  out  from  being  one  of  the  Governors. 


306  MEMOIRS   OF 

At  last,  on  May  7,  1755,  Lieutenant-Governor  James 
De  Lancey,  attended  by  Mr.  Goldsbrow  Banyer,  Deputy 
Secretary  of  the  Province,  bearing  the  Charter,  delivered 
that  important  document  at  a  meeting  of  over  twenty  of 
the  gentlemen  who  were  named  in  it  as  Governors.  After 
a  suitable  address  by  the  Lieutenant-Governor,  Mr.  Hors- 
manden,  a  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court,  administered  the 
oath  of  office  to  the  Governors  of  the  College,  after  which 
Mr.  Chambers,  who  presided  at  the  meeting,  made  a  reply 
to  the  Lieutenant-Governor  on  the  part  of  the  Governors, 
gratefully  acknowledging  the  honor  he  had  done  them, 
expressing  the  hope  that  they  would  always  merit  the  con- 
tinuance of  his  protection,  favor,  and  countenance,  and 
declaring  that  they  had  nothing  more  at  heart  than  to 
promote  the  glory  of  God,  the  true  Protestant  religion, 
and  a  generous  education  of  youth  in  the  liberal  arts  and 
sciences. 

The  College  being  now  incorporated  and  capable  of 
holding  the  land  destined  for  it  by  Trinity  Church,  the 
corporation  of  Trinity,  on  May  13,  1755,  delivered  to  the 
corporation  of  King's  College  deeds  of  conveyance  of  a 
piece  of  land  therein  described  as  "situate  on  the  west 
side  of  the  Broadway,  in  the  west  ward  of  the  City  of 
New  York,  fronting  easterly  to  Church  Street,  between 
Barclay  Street  and  Murray  Street,  440  feet,  and  thence 
running  westerly  along  Barclay  Street  and  Murray  Street 
to  the  North  River."  The  conditions  of  this  gift,  which 
had  been  previously  inserted  in  the  Charter,  and  had  been 
the  pretext  of  a  furious  opposition  to  the  granting  of  the 
Charter,  were  "  that  the  President  of  King's  College  for 
ever,  for  the  time  being,  should  be  a  member  of,  and  in 
communion  with,  the  Church  of  England  as  by  law 
established;  and  that  the  Morning  and  Evening  Service 
in  the  College  should  be  the  liturgy  of  the  said  Church, 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  307 

or  such  a  collection  of  prayers  out  of  that  liturgy,  together 
with  a  Collect  peculiar  for  the  College,  as  should  be  ap- 
proved by  its  President  and  Governors."  At  the  same 
time,  however,  the  charter  expressly  denied  to  the  College 
the  power  of  making  any  laws  or  regulations  tending  "  to 
exclude  any  person,  of  any  religious  denomination  what- 
ever, from  equal  liberty  and  advantage  of  education,  or 
from  any  of  the  liberties,  privileges,  benefits,  and  im- 
munities of  said  College,  on  account  of  his  particular 
tenets  in  matters  of  religion." 

The  popular  dread  of  the  beginning  of  a  Church  estab- 
lishment in  connection  with  King's  College  seems  to  have 
been  unreasonably  excessive.  It  would  have  been  ex- 
traordinary at  that  time  for  any  institution  of  learning 
in  the  British  dominions  not  to  have  some  religious  con- 
nection ;  and  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  only  endowment 
of  the  institution  was  to  be  derived  from  property  held  by 
Trinity  Church,  it  was  not  unreasonable  that  the  President 
of  the  College  should  be  required  to  be  a  communicant  of 
the  Church  of  England,  or  that  the  daily  prayers  should 
be  taken  from  the  liturgy  of  that  Church,  always  provided 
that  the  benefits  of  the  institution  should  be  free  and 
open  to  all  students  without  regard  to  their  religious 
associations  or  convictions.  How  little  the  Governors  of 
King's  College  were  disposed  to  make  the  College  sectarian 
in  character,  and  how  ready  they  were  to  make  it  service- 
able to  other  denominations  than  the  Church  of  England, 
was  significantly  shown  at  the  very  meeting  at  which  the 
Charter  was  delivered.  After  the  reply  of  Mr.  Chambers 
to  the  Lieutenant-Governor,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Ritzema,  Senior 
Minister  of  the  Reformed  Protestant  Dutch  Church,  said 
that  he  was  sorry  to  have  observed  the  differences  and  ani- 
mosities which  had  arisen  concerning  certain  restrictions 
in  the  Charter.  He  expressed  his  hope  that  some  means 


308  MEMOIRS   OF 

might  be  devised  to  heal  them,  and  the  opinion  that  it 
would  greatly  conduce  to  that  end  if  his  Honor  would  be 
pleased  to  grant,  either  by  addition  to  the  Charter  or  in 
such  other  manner  as  should  be  thought  most  proper,  that 
there  should  be  established  in  the  College  a  Professor  of 
Divinity,  with  a  suitable  allowance  of  salary,  for  the 
education  of  such  of  the  youth  of  the  Dutch  Church  as 
might  be  intended  for  the  ministry,  the  Professor  to  be 
chosen  by  the  Consistory  of  the  Church  for  the  time 
being.  In  reply,  the  Lieutenant- Governor  expressed  his 
approval  of  the  suggestion  and  his  willingness  to  grant 
any  application  in  accordance  with  it  that  the  Governors 
might  address  to  him.  Thereupon  the  Governors  unani- 
mously adopted  Mr.  Ritzema's  proposal  and  appointed  a 
committee  to  prepare  their  petition  accordingly.  At  their 
next  meeting,  a  draft  of  the  petition  was  approved,  and 
the  committee  was  directed  to  present  it  to  the  Lieutenant- 
Governor  ;  and  on  the  3d  of  June  following,  Mr.  Banyar, 
Deputy  Secretary  of  the  Province,  delivered  to  the  Gov- 
ernors His  Majesty's  additional  Charter,  making  provision 
for  the  establishment  of  a  Professor  of  Divinity  according 
to  the  doctrine,  discipline,  and  worship  established  by  the 
National  Synod  of  Dort. 

On  the  same  day,  a  device  for  the  seal  of  King's  College 
was  adopted  by  the  Governors.  It  was  prepared  by  Dr. 
Johnson,  and  continues  to  be  the  seal  of  Columbia  College, 
with  no  other  change  than  the  necessary  alteration  of  the 
name.  The  description  is  given  as  follows  by  Professor 
Van  Amringe,  literally  from  the  minutes : 

THE  DEVICE  OE  THE  COLLEGE  SEAL. —  The  Col- 
lege is  represented  by  a  Lady  sitting  in  a  Throne  or  Chair  of 
State,  with  Severall  Children  at  her  knees  to  represent  the 
Pupils,  with  I  Peter.  II.,  1,  2,  7  v.,  under  them  to  express  the 
Temper  with  which  they  should  apply  Themselves  to  seek  for 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  309 

True  Wisdom.  The  words  are,  Wherefore  laying  aside  all 
Malice  and  all  Guile,  and  Hypocrisies  and  Envies  and  Evil 
Speakings,  as  New-Born  Babes  desire  the  Sincere  Milk  of  the 
Word  that  ye  may  grow  thereby,  &c.  One  of  them  She  takes 
by  the  hand  with  her  left  hand  expressing  her  benevolent  de- 
sign of  Conducting  them  to  true  Wisdom  and  Virtue.  To 
which  purpose  She  holds  open  to  them  a  Book  in  her  right 
hand  in  which  is  (in)  Greek  letters  A  Of  I A  ZQNTA,  the  living 
or  lively  Oracles,  which  is  the  Epithet  that  St.  Stephen  gives 
to  the  Holy  Scriptures  —  Acts  7  :  38.  Out  of  her  Mouth  over 
her  left  Shoulder,  goes  a  Label  with  these  words  in  Hebrew 
Letters  OKI-EL  — God  is  my  Light;  alluding  to  Ps.  27:1, 
expressing  her  Acknowledgement  of  God  the  Father  of  Lights, 
as  the  Fountain  of  all  that  Light,  both  Natural  and  Eevealed 
with  which  She  proposes  to  inlighten  or  instruct  her  Children 
or  Pupils  ;  whereof  the  Sun  rising  under  the  Label  is  the  Em- 
blem or  Hieroglyphic,  alluding  to  that  expression,  Mai.  IV.,  2. 
The  Sun  of  Righteousness  arising  with  healing  in  his  Wings. 
Over  her  head  is  Jehovah  in  a  Glory,  the  Beams  coming  tri- 
angularly to  a  Point  near  her  head,  with  these  words  around 
her  for  her  Motto,  IN  LUMINE  TUO  VIDEBIMUS  LUMEN 
—  In  thy  light  shall  we  see  light.  —  Psal.  36  :  9.  On  the  Edge 
around  are  engraved  in  Capitals,  SIGILLUM  COLLEGII 
EEG.  NOV.  EBOR.  IN  AMERICA—  The  Seal  of  King's  Col- 
lege at  New  York  in  America. 

In  1756  the  Governors  of  King's  College  undertook 
the  erection  of  a  college  building  :  and  on  July  23  the 
first  stone,  bearing  the  following  inscription,  was  laid  by 
Governor  Sir  Charles  Hardy: 

Hujus  Collegii,  Regalis  dicti,  Regio 

Diplomate  constituti  in  Honorem 

Dei  O.M.  atq :  in  Ecclesiae  Reiq :  Publicae 

Emolumentum,  primum  hunc  lapidem 

Posuit  Vir  praecellentissimus,  Carolus 

Hardy,  Eques  Auratus,  hujus  Provinciae 

Praef  ectus  dignissimus.    Aug".  die  23°. 

AN.  DOM.  MDCCLVI. 


310  MEMOIRS  OF 

In  1756,  Mr.  William  Johnson,  A.M.,  a  graduate  of 
Yale,  who  had  been  appointed  in  1755  as  an  additional 
instructor,  went  to  England  to  take  Orders,  and  Mr. 
Leonard  Cutting,  of  Pembroke  Hall,  Cambridge,  was  ap- 
pointed in  his  stead.  In  November,  1757,  Dr.  Johnson 
left  the  city  on  account  of  the  prevalence  of  small-pox. 
He  remained  in  the  adjacent  county  of  West  Chester  for 
more  than  a  year,  during  which  time  his  service  to  the 
College  was  interrupted  ;  and  Mr.  Cutting  being  unequal 
to  the  care  of  all  the  thirty  students  who  were  then  con- 
nected with  the  institution,  Mr.  Treadwell,  a  graduate  of 
Harvard,  was  appointed  Professor  of  Mathematics  and 
Natural  Philosophy.  A  supply  of  instruments  for  teach- 
ing experimental  philosophy  was  imported  from  Europe 
for  Mr.  Treadwell's  use. 

On  June  21,  1758,  shortly  after  Mr.  Johnson's  return 
to  the  city,  the  first  Commencement  of  King's  College 
was  held.  The  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts  was  con- 
ferred on  five  of  the  eight  students  who  had  been  ad- 
mitted in  1754,  and  upon  three  other  gentlemen  who  had 
been  educated  either  in  Philadelphia  or  at  Princeton.  On 
the  same  occasion,  the  degree  of  Master  of  Arts  was  con- 
ferred upon  twelve  gentlemen  who  had  been  educated 
elsewhere,  some  of  the  twelve  who  already  held  the  degree 
being  admitted  ad  eundem,  and  others  being  admitted 
honoris  causa. 

In  the  following  year,  there  was  no  public  Commence- 
ment, but  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts  was  conferred 
on  one  candidate  who  had  been  educated  at  Princeton, 
and  on  one  of  the  six  students  who  had  been  matriculated 
in  1855.  Of  the  other  five  original  members  of  the  class, 
it  appears  from  the  record  of  the  College,  that  one  "in 
his  third  year,  went  to  Philadelphia  "  ;  another,  "  about  the 
middle  of  his  second  year,  went  into  the  army  "  ;  a  third, 


FREDERICK  A.  P.   BARNARD  311 

"after  three  years,  went  to  merchandise "  ;  the  fourth, 
"  after  two  years,  went  to  privateering " ;  and  the  fifth, 
"  after  three  years,  went  to  nothing  "  I 

In  October,  1759,  Dr.  Johnson  again  left  the  city,  to 
escape  from  the  terrors  of  small-pox,  and  during  his 
absence,  which  continued  until  the  month  of  May  follow- 
ing, his  duties  were  divided  between  Mr.  Cutting  and  Pro- 
fessor Treadwell.  The  declining  health  of  the  latter,  who 
died  in  1760,  made  it  necessary  to  find  some  one  to  take 
his  place,  and  a  committee  was  appointed  to  write  to  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  other  fit  persons  to  aid  them 
in  procuring  competent  men  "  to  assist  the  President  in 
carrying  on  the  education  and  instruction  of  the  youth  of 
the  College."  Archbishop  Seeker  seems  to  have  taken 
considerable  interest  in  the  matter,  though  for  a  time  with- 
out success.  It  was  not  until  November,  1761,  that  Mr. 
Treadwell's  chair  was  filled  by  the  appointment  of  Mr. 
Robert  Harpur,  a  gentleman  who  had  been  educated  at 
Glasgow ;  and  it  was  only  in  the  autumn  of  1762  that  the 
Rev.  Myles  Cooper,  A.M.  (afterwards  D.C.L.),  Fellow 
of  Queen's  College,  Oxford,  was  sent  out  by  Archbishop 
Seeker  to  fill  the  Chair  of  Moral  Philosophy  and  assist 
the  President  in  his  instruction  and  government.  In  the 
mean  time,  about  one-third  of  the  College  building  —  the 
part  which  afterwards  stood  between  the  wings  of  the  old 
edifice  in  College  Place  —  had  been  so  far  completed  that 
in  1760  the  officers  and  students  began  to  lodge  and 
mess  there.  The  plan  was  greatly  admired,  and  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Burnaby,  who  was  then  travelling  in  the  Province, 
wrote  of  it  as  follows  : 

The  College,  well  finished,  will  be  exceedingly  handsome. 
It  is  to  be  built  on  three  sides  of  a  quadrangle,  fronting  Hud- 
son's or  North  River,  and  will  be  the  most  beautifully  situated 
of  any  College,  I  believe,  in  the  world.  At  present,  only  one 


312  MEMOIRS  OF 

wing  is  finished,  which  is  of  stone,  and  consists  of  twenty-four 
sets  of  apartments,  each  having  a  large  sitting-room,  with  a 
study  and  bed-chamber. 

On  March  1,  1763,  Dr.  Johnson  resigned  the  Presi- 
dency of  the  College,  and  on  April  12,  Mr.  Cooper  was 
elected  as  his  successor.  The  administration  of  the  new 
President  was  vigorous,  and  for  several  years  it  was 
exceedingly  successful.  At  the  meeting  of  the  Govern- 
ors, at  which  Dr.  Johnson's  resignation  was  accepted, 
it  was  resolved  to  establish  a  Grammar  School,  which  was 
opened  shortly  afterwards  under  the  charge  of  Mr.  Mat- 
thew Cushing,  of  Charlestown,  Massachusetts.  Within  a 
short  time  a  librarian  was  appointed  ;  the  Statutes  of  the 
College  were  revised  and  improved,  and  the  scheme  of 
studies  in  the  Classical  Department  of  the  College  was 
greatly  enlarged. 

In  October  of  the  same  year,  Mr.  Cutting  resigned 
his  position,  and  it  was  not  until  two  years  later  that  Dr. 
Clossy,  who  had  been  educated  at  Trinity  College,  Dub- 
lin, and  was  the  author  of  an  able  work  on  "Morbid 
Anatomy,"  was  induced  to  accept  the  vacant  position, 
with  a  salary  of  X144.  A  further  salary  of  X36  was 
assigned  to  him  as  Professor  of  Natural  Philosophy,  Pro- 
fessor Harpur  thereafter  teaching  only  Mathematics. 

On  February  26,  1767,  a  committee  which  had  been  ap- 
pointed to  petition  the  Governor  of  the  Province  for  a 
grant  of  land,  reported  that  they  had  obtained  a  grant  of 
twenty-four  thousand  acres.  The  committee  was  there- 
upon empowered  to  view  the  lands,  and  if  it  should  then 
be  thought  proper,  to  have  them  surveyed.  From  subse- 
quent proceedings  which  were  taken  in  1770  for  the  more 
speedy  settlement  of  these  lands,  it  appears  that  they  were 
situated  in  the  new  county  of  Gloucester,  that  they  had 
been  erected  into  a  township  with  the  usual  privileges, 


FREDERICK   A.   P.   BARNARD  313 

and  that  they  were  intended  to  become  the  site  of  the 
county  town,  to  the  great  advantage  of  the  College.  Un- 
luckily, however,  it  turned  out  that  the  township  was  com- 
prehended within  a  tract  of  country  which  had  been  long 
in  dispute  between  New  York  and  New  Hampshire,  and 
which  was  erected  after  the  Revolution  into  the  new 
State  of  Vermont.  In  the  settlement  of  the  affair  it  was 
agreed  on  the  part  of  the  State  of  New  York  that,  in  con- 
sideration of  a  sum  of  130,000,  all  grants  of  lands,  lying 
within  the  limits  of  Vermont,  which  had  been  previously 
made  by  the  authority  of  New  York,  should  be  declared 
to  be  null  and  void ;  and  so  the  magnificent  landed  endow- 
ment of  the  College,  on  which  so  many  hopes  had  been 
founded,  was  irretrievably  lost.  The  considerations  of 
public  policy  by  which  the  State  of  New  York  was  induced 
to  consent  to  this  settlement  were,  no  doubt,  weighty  ; 
but  the  surrender  of  the  right  of  the  College  to  a  property 
which  would  speedily  have  furnished  it  with  an  ample  rev- 
enue was  a  misfortune  which  no  subsequent  assistance 
from  the  State  could  be  expected  adequately  to  repair. 

In  1767,  the  Grammar  School  appeared  to  have  been 
less  successful  than  the  expense  incurred  in  supporting  it 
had  entitled  the  Governors  to  expect.  It  was  therefore 
reorganized  with  a  smaller  staff  than  before,  but  the  Gov- 
ernors were  so  far  from  being  discouraged  by  this  dis- 
appointment, that  they  proceeded  to  adopt  a  scheme, 
proposed  by  Dr.  Glossy,  for  the  establishment  of  a 
Medical  School.  In  connection  with  Dr.  Glossy,  Drs. 
Middleton,  Jones,  Smith,  Bard,  and  Tennent  undertook 
to  act  as  professors.  Drs.  Middleton,  Jones,  and  Bard 
soon  afterwards  projected  the  foundation  of  the  New 
York  Hospital,  and  at  the  Commencement  of  the  College, 
in  1768,  Dr.  Bard  set  forth  the  necessity  and  usefulness 
of  a  public  infirmary  so  warmly  and  pathetically  that  Sir 


314  MEMOIKS   OP 

Henry  Moore  himself  immediately  set  on  foot  a  subscrip- 
tion for  that  purpose. 

For  several  years  the  College,  the  Grammar  School, 
and  the  Medical  School  seem  to  have  made  steady  and 
substantial  progress.  The  teaching  Faculty  was  gradu- 
ally enlarged,  and  the  President  and  Governors  must 
evidently  have  intended  so  to  extend  the  plan  of  the 
institution  as  to  make  it  a  true  university.  Among  the 
papers  of  the  College  is  one  attributed  to  Dr.  Cooper, 
which  was  probably  written  in  1773  or  1774,  giving  the 
following  account  of  the  condition  and  prospects  of  the 
Institution  at  that  date: 

Since  the  passing  of  the  charter  the  Institution  hath 
received  great  emolument  by  grants  from  his  most  gracious 
majesty  King  George  the  Third,  and  by  liberal  contributions 
from  many  of  the  nobility  and  gentry  in  the  parent  country ; 
from  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in  Foreign 
Parts,  and  from  several  public-spirited  gentlemen  in  America 
and  elsewhere.  By  means  of  these  and  other  benefactions, 
the  Governors  of  the  College  have  been  enabled  to  extend 
their  plan  of  education  almost  as  diffusely  as  any  college  in 
Europe ;  herein  being  taught  by  proper  Masters  and  Professors, 
who  are  chosen  by  the  Governors  and  President,  Divinity, 
Natural  Law,  Physic,  Logic,  Ethics,  Metaphysics,  Mathe- 
matics, Natural  Philosophy,  Astronomy,  Geography,  History, 
Chronology,  Rhetoric,  Hebrew,  Greek,  Latin,  Modern  Lan- 
guages, the  Belles-Lettres,  and  whatever  else  of  literature  may 
tend  to  accomplish  the  pupils  as  scholars  and  gentlemen. 

To  the  College  is  also  annexed  a  Grammar  School  for  the 
due  preparation  of  those  who  propose  to  complete  their  educa- 
tion with  the  arts  and  sciences. 

All  students  but  those  in  Medicine  are  obliged  to  lodge 
and  diet  in  the  College,  unless  they  are  particularly  exempted 
by  the  Governors  or  President ;  and  the  edifice  is  surrounded 
by  an  high  fence,  which  also  encloses  a  large  court  and  garden, 
and  a  porter  constantly  attends  at  the  front  gate,  which  is 
closed  at  ten  o'clock  each  evening  in  summer  and  nine  in 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  315 

winter ;  after  which  hours  the  names  of  all  that  come  in  are 
delivered  weekly  to  the  President. 

The  College  is  situated  on  a  dry,  gravelly  soil,  about  one 
hundred  and  fifty  yards  from  the  bank  of  the  Hudson  Biver, 
which  it  overlooks ;  commanding,  from  the  eminence  on  which 
it  stands,  a  most  extensive  and  beautiful  prospect  of  the 
opposite  shore  and  country  of  New  Jersey,  the  City  and 
Island  of  New  York,  Long  Island,  Staten  Island,  New  York 
Bay  with  its  Islands,  the  Narrows,  forming  the  mouth  of  the 
harbor,  etc.,  etc.,  and  being  totally  unencumbered  by  any 
adjacent  buildings,  and  admitting  the  purest  circulation  of  air 
from  the  river  and  every  other  quarter,  has  the  benefit  of  as 
agreeable  and  healthy  a  situation  as  can  possibly  be  conceived. 

Visitations  by  the  Governors  are  quarterly ;  at  which  times 
premiums  of  books,  silver  medals,  etc.,  are  adjudged  to  the 
most  deserving. 

This  Seminary  hath  already  produced  a  number  of  gentle- 
men who  do  great  honor  to  their  professions,  the  place  of  their 
education  and  themselves,  in  Divinity,  Law,  Medicine,  etc., 
etc.,  in  this  and  various  other  colonies,  both  on  the  American 
continent  and  West  India  Islands  ;  and  the  College  is  annually 
increasing  as  well  in  students  as  reputation. 

From  the  account  of  Dr.  Cooper,  King's  College  had 
now  reached  a  condition  of  prosperity  which  justified  the 
most  sanguine  hopes  of  its  friends  and  patrons  in  England 
and  America  ;  but  their  hopes  were  doomed  to  disappoint- 
ment. The  dispute  between  the  American  Colonies  and 
the  mother  country  was  growing  rapidly  to  the  dimen- 
sions of  an  international  quarrel,  and  if  the  Colonies  had 
earnest  and  enthusiastic  supporters  in  England,  England 
had  loyal  and  devoted  adherents  among  the  colonists. 
The  controversy  grew  daily  more  and  more  embittered, 
and  as  a  loyal  subject  of  the  Crown,  Dr.  Cooper  considered 
himself  bound  to  take  an  active  part  in  maintaining  the 
authority  of  the  Government.  He  distinguished  himself 
in  controversy  with  Smith,  Livingston,  and  other  literary 


316  MEMOIRS  OF 

champions  of  the  Whig  party,  and  he  had  the  misfortune 
to  be  worsted  by  an  anonymous  antagonist  whom  he  pres- 
ently discovered  to  be  one  of  his  own  pupils,  Alexander 
Hamilton,  then  a  student  in  one  of  the  Junior  classes. 
The  talents  and  popularity  of  Dr.  Cooper  won  for  him  the 
respect  and  affection  of  his  students,  but  did  not  prevent 
them  from  rejecting  his  Tory  principles.  Some  of  them, 
indeed,  like  Jay  and  Livingston,  Maurice  and  Benson, 
Van  Cortlandt  and  Rutgers,  Troup  and  Hamilton,  were 
among  the  first  to  pronounce  for  independence,  and  were 
destined  to  become  leaders  of  their  countrymen,  both  in 
the  cabinet  and  in  the  field. 

"  It  would  be  an  injustice  to  the  memory  of  Dr.  Cooper," 
says  a  writer  in  the  Analectic  Magazine,  "  not  to  add 
that,  far  from  betraying  anything  like  mortification  or 
resentment,  he  uniformly  treated  his  youthful  antagonist, 
Hamilton,  with  good  humor  and  even  respect,"  which 
there  is  every  reason  to  believe  was  kindly  reciprocated. 
This  academic  tolerance,  however,  did  not  extend  to  the 
populace.  A  letter  was  published,  bearing  date,  Philadel- 
phia, April  25, 1775,  and  addressed  to  Dr.  Cooper  and  four 
other  gentlemen  of  New  York,  which  ascribed  to  them, 
and  to  their  assurances  of  the  defection  of  New  York,  "  all 
the  hostile  proceedings  of  England  —  the  blood  of  their 
fellow-subjects  who  had  fallen  in  Massachusetts  —  towns 
in  flames  —  a  desolated  country,  butchered  fathers,  weep- 
ing widows  and  children,  with  all  the  horrors  of  a  civil 
war."  They  were  denounced  as  parricides  and  were  told 
that  "the  Americans,  reduced  to  desperation,  would  no 
longer  satisfy  their  resentment  with  the  execution  of 
villains  in  effigy."  The  letter  was  signed  "  Three  Mill- 
ions," and  concluded  with  this  significant  exhortation  : 
"  Fly  for  your  lives,  or  anticipate  your  doom  by  becoming 
your  own  executioners."  This  warning  was  speedily 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  317 

followed  by  a  popular  outbreak.  On  the  night  of  May 
10,  a  mob  of  several  hundred  men  forcibly  entered  Dr. 
Cooper's  apartment  in  the  College,  but,  fortunately,  one 
of  his  former  pupils  had  succeeded  in  advising  him  of  his 
danger  just  in  time  to  enable  him  to  escape.  He  made  his 
way,  "only  half  dressed,  over  the  College  fence,  reached  the 
shore  of  the  Hudson,  and  wandered  along  the  river  bank 
until  near  morning,  when  he  found  shelter  in  the  house  of 
his  friend,  Mr.  Stuyvesant,  where  he  remained  for  that 
day,  and  during  the  night  following  took  refuge  on  board 
the  Kingfisher,  Captain  James  Montagu,  an  English  ship 
of  war  at  anchor  in  the  harbor,  in  which,  soon  afterwards, 
he  sailed  for  England." 

Six  days  after  the  escape  of  the  President,  the  Rev. 
Benjamin  Moore,  an  alumnus  of  the  College  who  had 
recently  returned  from  England  in  Holy  Orders  and  who 
afterwards  became  Bishop  of  New  York,  was  appointed 
Presses  pro  tempore,  as  it  was  still  supposed  that  Dr. 
Cooper  might  return.  In  consequence  of  Dr.  Cooper's 
absence,  no  public  Commencement  was  held  that  year,  but 
the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts  was  conferred  on  seven 
students,  two  alumni  of  the  College  were  admitted  to 
the  degree  of  Master  of  Arts,  and  eight  students  were 
matriculated. 

On  the  6th  of  April,  1776,  the  Treasurer  of  the  Col- 
lege received  a  message  from  the  Committee  of  Safety, 
desiring  the  Governors  "  to  prepare  the  College  within  six 
days  for  the  reception  of  troops."  The  students  were 
dispersed;  the  library  and  apparatus  were  deposited  in 
the  City  Hall ;  the  College  buildings  were  converted  into 
a  military  hospital.  In  the  end,  almost  all  the  apparatus 
was  wholly  lost  ;  of  the  library,  only  six  or  seven  hundred 
volumes  were  discovered  about  thirty  years  afterwards  in 
a  room  belonging  to  St.  Paul's  Chapel,  and  no  one  knew 


318  MEMOIRS   OF 

how  or  when  they  had  been  placed  there.  The  seizure 
of  the  College  building  and  the  practical  suppression  of 
the  institution  were  probably  prompted  by  misdirected 
political  animosity;  but  whatever  Dr.  Cooper's  personal 
course  may  have  been,  the  history  of  the  United  States 
bears  witness  to  the  fact  that  the  alumni  of  King's  College 
did  noble  service  to  their  country  both  during  the  War  of 
Independence  and  in  the  hardly  less  trying  times  which 
followed. 

In  1776  no  public  Commencement  was  held,  though  six 
students  were  admitted  to  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts, 
and  the  College  record  of  the  year  remarks  that  "the 
turbulence  and  confusion  which  prevailed  in  every  part  of 
the  country  effectually  suppressed  every  literary  pursuit." 
Nevertheless,  some  instruction  appears  to  have  been  given 
outside  the  walls  of  the  College,  for  in  1777  two  students 
were  matriculated  ;  the  Governors  must  have  continued 
to  hold  occasional  meetings,  as  there  still  exists  a  certified 
copy  of  the  records  of  a  meeting  held  on  May  17,  1781 ; 
and  it  appears  from  the  minutes  of  a  meeting  of  the 
Trustees  of  Columbia  College,  held  on  March  18,  1788, 
that  "Mr.  Moore,  the  President  ad  interim,  occupied 
during  a  part  of  this  period  (1776-1784)  a  house  fur- 
nished by  Mr.  Lispenard  for  the  use  of  the  officers  and 
students  of  the  College  when  the  College  edifice  was 
converted  into  a  hospital."  For  eight  years,  however, 
from  1776  to  1784,  King's  College  was  virtually  suspended, 
and  it  was  only  revived  by  an  act  passed  on  May  1  of  the 
latter  year  "  for  granting  certain  privileges  to  the  College 
heretofore  called  King's  College,  for  altering  the  name 
and  charter  thereof,  and  erecting  an  University  within 
this  State." 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD        319 

COLUMBIA  COLLEGE. 

The  University  of  the  State  of  New  York  was  organ- 
ized by  the  Act  of  May  1,  1784,  under  twenty-one  Re- 
gents who  had  power  to  visit  and  inspect  all  colleges  and 
schools  established  in  the  State  ;  to  appoint  a  president  of 
any  college  or  a  principal  of  any  academy  which  might  be 
vacant  without  reasonable  cause  for  one  year  ;  to  incorpo- 
rate new  colleges ;  and  to  confer  all  degrees  above  that  of 
Master  of  Arts  which  were  known  or  granted  by  any  uni- 
versity or  college  in  Europe.  On  November  26  of  the 
same  year,  this  act  was  amended,  but  the  provisions  of 
the  amended  act  were  found  to  be  so  obscure  and  incon- 
sistent, that  it  was  impossible  for  the  Regents  to  proceed 
with  satisfaction  in  the  reorganization  of  King's  College. 
Accordingly,  on  April  13,  1787,  a  new  act  was  passed,  en- 
titled "  An  Act  to  Institute  an  University  within  this  State, 
and  for  other  Purposes  therein  Mentioned."  Under  this 
act  the  University  of  the  State  of  New  York  was  continued 
with  the  same  powers  as  before,  but  the  administration  of 
the  Institution  formerly  known  as  King's  College  was  com- 
mitted to  a  separate  corporation.  "  The  Charter  hereto- 
fore granted  to  the  Governors  of  the  College  of  the  Prov- 
ince of  New  York  in  the  City  of  New  York  in  America" 
was  "fully  and  absolutely  ratified  and  confirmed  in  all 
respects,"  with  these  exceptions:  (1)  The  College  was 
thenceforth  to  be  called  Columbia  College,  and  the  style 
of  the  corporation  was  to  be  "  the  Trustees  of  Columbia 
College  in  the  City  of  New  York  ";  (2)  No  persons  were 
to  be  trustees  "  in  virtue  of  any  offices,  characters,  or 
descriptions  whatsoever " ;  (3)  The  clauses  of  the  Charter 
requiring  "  the  taking  of  oaths  and  the  subscribing  of  a 
declaration,"  "  making  a  person  ineligible  to  the  office  of 
President  on  account  of  his  religious  tenets,"  and  "pre- 


320  MEMOIRS  OF 

scribing  a  form  of  public  prayer  to  be  used  in  the  Col- 
lege," were  repealed  ;  (4)  The  provision  of  the  Charter 
requiring  obedience  to  the  laws  of  England  was  likewise 
repealed,  and  it  was  enacted  that  laws  and  ordinances 
made  by  the  Trustees  should  not  be  contrary  to  the  Con- 
stitution and  Laws  of  the  State  of  New  York  ;  (5)  The 
provision  of  the  Charter  requiring  a  quorum  of  fifteen 
Governors  for  the  despatch  of  business  was  amended  so 
that  a  quorum  of  thirteen  Trustees  should  suffice. 

Twenty-nine  Trustees  of  Columbia  College  were  named 
and  appointed  in  the  act,  and  it  was  provided  that  when 
their  number  should  be  reduced  by  death,  resignation,  or 
removal  to  twenty-four,  these  twenty-four  should  be  the 
Trustees  in  perpetual  succession,  with  power  to  fill  vacan- 
cies, as  granted  in  the  original  Charter.  All  rights,  privi- 
leges, and  immunities,  previously  conferred  upon  the 
Governors  of  King's  College,  and  all  property,  real  and 
personal,  belonging  to  that  corporation,  were  granted  to 
and  vested  in  "  the  Trustees  of  Columbia  College  in  the 
State  of  New  York." 

The  first  Trustees  of  Columbia  College,  appointed  by 
the  act  of  April  13,  1787,  were  the  following: 

James  Duane,  Samuel  Provost,  John  H.  Livingston, 
Richard  Varick,  Alexander  Hamilton,  John  Mason,  James 
Wilson,  John  Gano,  Brockholst  Livingston,  Robert 
Harper,  John  Daniel  Gross,  Johann  Christoff  Kunze,  Wal- 
ter Livingston,  Lewis  A.  Scott,  Joseph  Delaplaine,  Leon- 
ard Lispenard,  Abraham  Beach,  John  Lawrance,  John 
Rutherford,  Morgan  Lewis,  John  Cochran,  Gershom 
Seixas,  Charles  M'Knight,  Thomas  Jones,  Malachi  Treat, 
Samuel  Bard,  Nicholas  Romein,  Benjamin  Kissam,  and 
Ebenezer  Crossby. 

The  Trustees  of  Columbia  College  assembled  for  organ- 
ization on  May  8,  1787,  when  Robert  Harper  and  Brock- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  321 

hoist  Livingston  were  reappointed  to  their  respective 
offices  of  Clerk  and  Treasurer  which  they  had  held  under 
the  Regent  of  the  University,  and  by-laws  which  had 
been  previously  established  by  the  Regents,  so  far  as  they 
were  applicable  to  the  present  Constitution  of  the  College, 
were  adopted. 

On  the  21st  of  the  same  month,  William  Samuel  John- 
son, LL.D.,  son  of  the  first  President  of  King's  College, 
was  elected  President,  but  did  not  signify  his  acceptance 
to  the  Trustees  until  the  month  of  November  following. 
When  he  took  charge  of  the  institution,  the  College 
proper  had  thirty-nine  students,  nearly  one-half  of  whom 
were  Freshmen.  Ten  of  the  students  had  rooms,  and  five 
of  the  ten  were  boarded,  in  the  College.  The  annual  in- 
come of  the  institution  was  about  .£1330,  and  out  of  this 
modest  sum  the  Trustees  maintained  a  Faculty  of  Arts 
consisting  of  three  Professors.  The  Faculty  of  Medicine 
likewise  consisted  of  three  Professors.  During  the  next 
five  years  nothing  of  great  importance  appears  to  have 
occurred,  except  that  in  1788  John  Randolph,  of  Mattoax, 
Virginia,  afterwards  better  known  as  John  Randolph  of 
Roanoke,  and  his  brother,  Theodoric,  entered  the  Freshman 
class.  Theodoric  does  not  appear  to  have  passed  beyond 
his  Sophomore  year,  but  John  is  known  to  have  continued 
his  studies  as  a  Junior  in  1790. 

In  February,  1792,  the  Trustees,  acting  at  the  instance 
of  the  Medical  Society  of  the  State  of  New  York  and  in 
concert  with  the  Regents  of  the  University,  enlarged  the 
Faculty  of  the  Medical  School  by  the  appointment  of  a 
Dean  and  seven  Professors.  Dr.  Samuel  Bard,  who  had 
been  Professor  of  the  Theory  and  Practice  of  Medicine  in 
the  first  Medical  School  established  by  the  College  in  1767, 
and  who  had  more  recently  held  the  Chairs  of  Chemistry 
and  of  Natural  Philosophy  and  Astronomy,  under  the  Re- 


322  MEMOIRS   OP 

gents,  was  elected  Dean;  the  Professors  associated  with 
him  were  Drs.  Baily,  Post,  Rodgers,  Hamersley,  Smith, 
Nicoll,  and  Kissam,  all  men  of  acknowledged  eminence  in 
their  profession. 

A  few  months  later,  the  Trustees  were  encouraged  by 
the  liberality  of  the  Legislature  to  make  a  large  addition 
to  the  College  Library,  and  what  was  of  more  importance, 
greatly  to  increase  the  teaching  staff  of  the  department. 
The  Legislature  made  a  grant  of  a  lump  sum  of  £  7900 
and  a  further  appropriation  of  ,£750  to  be  paid  annually 
for  a  term  of  five  years.  With  this  assistance  the  Trus- 
tees felt  justified  in  proceeding  to  the  erection  of  an 
additional  building,  the  foundation  of  which  was  laid 
along  the  west  side  of  the  College  Green,  at  right  angles 
to  the  existing  edifice,  and  on  the  northern  end  of  this 
foundation  a  structure  was  begun  which  was  intended 
to  contain  a  hall  and  several  recitation-rooms. 

The  Trustees  next  proceeded  to  the  enlargement  of  the 
teaching  Faculty  of  the  College.  Dr.  Kunze  was  reap- 
pointed  Professor  of  Oriental  Languages;  Dr.  Mitchill, 
Professor  of  Natural  History,  Chemistry,  Agriculture, 
and  Botany ;  M.  de  Marcelan,  Professor  of  French.  In 
the  following  year,  1793,  Mr.  James  Kent  was  elected 
Professor  of  Law,  and  in  1795  the  Rev.  Dr.  M'Knight 
was  appointed  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  and  Logic ; 
the  Rev.  John  Bisset,  A.M.,  Professor  of  Rhetoric  and 
Belles-Lettres ;  and  a  Professorship  of  Geography  was 
added  to  that  of  Mathematics  and  Natural  Philosophy, 
which  was  already  held  by  Dr.  Kemp. 

It  unfortunately  turned  out  that  the  Trustees  had  un- 
dertaken more  than  their  means  permitted  them  to  accom- 
plish, and  in  1796  they  were  obliged  to  ask  for  a  further 
appropriation  from  the  Legislature  to  enable  them  to  com- 
plete the  College  building.  The  application  was  refused ; 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD  323 

the  committee  in  charge  of  the  building  was  instructed 
to  proceed  with  it  until  the  money  in  their  hands  should 
be  expended ;  and  in  the  month  of  June,  1796,  the  com- 
mittee was  further  directed  to  sell  the  perishable  building 
material  which  then  remained  on  hand.  In  1797,  the  ap- 
propriation of  .£750  per  annum  which  had  been  made  for 
five  years  by  the  Legislature  was  not  renewed  and  the 
Trustees  were  greatly  embarrassed.  Professor  Kent's 
lectures  on  Law  were  discontinued  in  1798.  In  Febru- 
ary, 1799,  the  teaching  Faculty  was  still  further  reduced. 
The  Chairs  of  Rhetoric  and  Belles-Lettres,  and  of  Logic 
and  Moral  Philosophy,  were  committed  to  the  President ; 
Mathematics,  Natural  Philosophy,  and  Geography  were 
united  under  one  Professor ;  the  Latin  and  Greek  lan- 
guages, and  the  Roman  and  Greek  antiquities,  were  united 
under  another  ;  the  Professorships  of  Oriental  Languages, 
of  French  and  of  Law,  were  altogether  discontinued ;  but 
a  Chair  of  Natural  History  and  Chemistry  was  estab- 
lished, and  these  studies  were  included  in  the  regular 
academic  course. 

On  July  16,  1800,  says  Professor  Van  Amringe  : 

Dr.  Johnson,  having  nearly  reached  his  74th  year,  and  feel- 
ing the  infirmities  of  age,  resigned  his  presidency  and  retired 
to  Stratford.  The  tranquil  life  to  which  he  was  there  restored, 
and  the  air  of  his  native  village,  reestablished  in  a  great 
degree  his  bodily  health,  and  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  leisure 
so  well  earned  by  the  professional  toils  and  highly  important 
public  services  of  his  previous  long  career,  he  lived  to  enter 
upon  his  93d  year,  "  retaining  to  the  last  his  vigor  and  activity 
of  mind,  the  ardor  of  his  literary  curiosity,  and  a  most  lively 
interest  in  whatever  concerned  the  welfare  of  this  country 
and  of  the  Christian  world." 

On  May  25,  1801,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Wharton,  of  Philadel- 
phia, was  elected  President.  His  acceptance  was  signified 


324  MEMOIRS   OF 

by  letter  on  August  3d;  but  on  December  llth  of  the 
same  year  he  resigned  his  position.  On  December  30th, 
the  Trustees  resolved  that  the  President  should  in  future 
be  released  from  the  Professorship  of  Rhetoric,  Belles- 
Lettres,  Logic,  and  Moral  Philosophy,  which  had  been 
attached  to  his  office  in  1799,  and  that  he  should  there- 
after be  charged  only  with  the  superintendence  of  the 
institution,  including  the  duty  of  presiding  at  examina- 
tions and  commencements,  and  such  other  duties  as  were 
appropriate  to  his  office.  Under  this  arrangement  the 
Right  Rev.  Benjamin  Moore,  Bishop  of  New  York,  who 
had  been  appointed  Presses  ad  interim  on  the  depart- 
ure of  Dr.  Cooper  in  1775,  was  appointed  on  the  fol- 
lowing day  to  the  office  of  President ;  and,  at  the  same 
time,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Bowden,  who  was  also  an  alumnus  of 
the  College,  was  appointed  to  the  Professorship  of  Moral 
Philosophy,  Rhetoric,  Belles-Lettres,  and  Logic,  which 
for  the  two  previous  years  had  been  held  by  President 
Johnson. 

The  internal  organization  of  the  College  under  the 
Presidency  of  Bishop  Moore  was  far  from  perfect,  and 
was  probably  not  intended  to  be  permanent.  He  did 
not  reside  in  the  College  nor  take  an  active  part  in  the 
administration  of  its  ordinary  discipline,  the  government 
of  the  students  being  committed  to  the  Faculty.  Never- 
theless, under  the  wise  and  judicious  conduct  of  Drs. 
Kemp,  Wilson,  and  Bowen,  the  institution  continued  for 
ten  years  to  grow  in  numbers  and  to  increase  in  reputa- 
tion. A  grant  of  land  which  was  made  by  the  Regents 
of  the  University  in  1802  yielded  a  certain  revenue,  and 
the  real  estate  in  the  city  which  belonged  to  the  College 
grew  daily  more  valuable,  so  that  the  Trustees  were 
enabled  to  complete  the  hall  and  recitation-rooms  on 
the  north  end  of  the  new  foundation. 


FREDERICK  A.  P.   BARNARD  325 

It  was  impossible  at  that  time  to  do  more.  The  re- 
mainder of  the  building  which  had  been  so  hopefully 
begun  fell  gradually  to  ruin,  while  the  original  edifice 
presented  a  decayed  and  unsightly  appearance.  But  the 
internal  life  of  the  College  was  vigorous.  In  the  month 
of  June,  1809,  upon  the  recommendation  of  a  committee 
consisting  of  Mr.  Rufus  King  and  the  Rev.  Drs.  Mason, 
Abeel,  Hobart,  and  Miller,  the  standard  of  scholarship  re- 
quired for  admission  to  the  College  was  notably  raised, 
and  on  October  1,  1810,  the  whole  course  of  studies  and 
the  system  of  discipline  were  revised  in  accordance  with 
the  new  statute  of  admission.  This  action  had  the 
double  effect  of  elevating  the  standard  of  collegiate 
education  and  of  establishing  the  College  in  the  respect 
and  confidence  of  the  community,  so  that,  in  the  spring 
of  1810,  the  Trustees  obtained  a  new  charter  from  the 
Legislature  by  which  certain  restrictions  in  the  former 
charter  were  removed  and  certain  defects  which  experi- 
ence had  discovered  were  supplied.  Among  other  altera- 
tions, the  limit  of  the  term  for  which  the  College  might 
grant  leases  was  extended  from  twenty-one  years  to 
sixty-three  years. 

From  the  Annual  Report  of  the  Regents  in  February, 
1810,  it  appears  that  the  number  of  students  matriculated 
for  that  year  was  135;  and  the  Trustees  observed  that 
"the  Regents  will  perceive  that,  notwithstanding  the 
embarrassments  with  which  she  has  had  to  struggle, 
Columbia  College  not  only  maintains  her  ground,  but 
increases  her  importance."  They  further  observed  that 
they  have  so  far  prosecuted  the  theoretical  and  practical 
system  of  the  College  as  "to  lay  a  broader  and  stronger 
foundation  for  sound  and  thorough  education  than,  as 
they  believed,  has  hitherto  been  known  in  these  States." 

Columbia  College  having  now  (1811)  been  brought  to 


326  MEMOIRS  or 

a  state  of  prosperity  which  required  the  undivided  service 
of  the  President,  Bishop  Moore  resigned  his  office,  and  in 
the  following  month  the  Trustees  created  the  new  office 
of  Provost.  The  Provost  was  to  supply  the  place  of  the 
President  in  his  absence,  to  share  in  the  general  superin- 
tendence of  the  College,  and  to  conduct  the  classical 
studies  of  the  Senior  class.  Under  this  new  arrangement, 
the  Rev.  William  Harris  was  elected  President  and  the 
Rev.  Dr.  John  M.  Mason  was  elected  Provost.  The 
President  being  ex  officio  a  member  of  the  Board  of 
Trustees,  an  act  of  the  Legislature  was  obtained  under 
which  the  Provost  was  made  eligible  to  membership  in 
the  same  Board,  and  in  May,  1813,  Dr.  Mason  was 
elected  a  Trustee.  The  division  of  responsibility  between 
the  President  and  the  Provost  does  not  seem  to  have 
worked  well,  and  was  not  long  continued.  In  July,  1816, 
Dr.  Mason  resigned  his  office,  and  in  November  following 
the  Trustees  resolved  that  the  powers  and  duties  of  the 
Provost,  with  the  exception  of  taking  the  classical  studies 
of  the  Senior  Class,  should  be  committed  to  the  President. 
Under  this  arrangement,  President  Harris  became  the 
sole  responsible  head  of  the  College. 

The  College  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons  having  been 
established  in  the  city  of  New  York  by  the  Regents  of 
the  University,  the  Trustees  of  Columbia,  on  November  1, 
1813,  agreed  to  incorporate  their  Medical  School  with 
that  new  institution,  and  in  accordance  with  this  agree- 
ment, the  separate  exercises  of  the  Medical  School  of 
Columbia  College  were  then  discontinued. 

In  1814,  the  Legislature  made  to  the  College  a  grant  of 
about  twenty  acres  of  land  on  Manhattan  Island,  pre- 
viously occupied  as  a  Botanic  Garden  by  the  late  Dr. 
Hosack,  from  whom  it  had  been  purchased  by  the  State. 
The  grant  was  made  on  condition  that  the  College  should 


FREDERICK  A.   P.    BARNARD  327 

be  removed  to  that  tract  of  land  within  a  period  of  twelve 
years,  and  was  intended  by  the  Legislature  to  be  a  partial 
compensation  for  the  large  estate  in  Gloucester  County 
which  the  College  had  lost  when  Vermont  became  a  State 
of  the  Union.  The  land  was  at  that  time  about  three 
miles  from  the  city,  and  was  valued  at  about  $250  per 
acre,  or  altogether,  at  about  $5000.  When  it  passed  into 
the  possession  of  the  Trustees  it  was  yielding  a  trifling 
income,  but  as  the  city  was  extended  further  and  further 
northward,  the  revenue  derived  from  it  was  wholly  inade- 
quate to  meet  the  taxes  and  assessments  which  were 
levied  upon  it.  For  many  years,  the  management  of  this 
property  was  a  matter  of  great  perplexity  to  the  Trustees  ; 
but  at  length,  in  1850-52,  it  was  so  judiciously  leased 
that  it  has  become  a  very  valuable  endowment  of  the 
College.  It  is  now  situated  in  the  best  part  of  the  city 
and  extends  east  and  west  between  Fifth  and  Sixth 
Avenues,  and  north  and  south  between  Forty-seventh 
and  Fifty-first  Streets. 

It  does  not  seem  to  have  been  expected  that  the  Legis- 
lature would  exact  from  the  Trustees  a  fulfilment  of  the 
condition  annexed  to  the  grant  of  the  Botanic  Garden, 
that  the  College  should  be  removed  to  that  place  within 
a  period  of  twelve  years,  and  in  1819  the  condition  was 
repealed.  Meanwhile,  in  1817,  the  Trustees  having  made 
a  careful  examination  of  their  financial  resources,  resolved 
to  make  thorough  repairs  of  the  old  edifice,  and  also  to 
erect  additional  buildings.  The  old  building  was  greatly 
altered,  part  of  it  being  reserved  as  a  dwelling-house, 
and  the  rest  being  so  arranged  as  to  furnish  a  Chapel,  a 
Library,  and  the  necessary  recitation-rooms.  Two  wings 
were  added,  each  fifty  feet  square  and  each  containing 
two  houses  for  professors.  In  the  prosecution  of  this 
work,  the  Trustees  were  aided  by  an  appropriation  of 


328  MEMOIRS   OF 


),000  from  the  Legislature ;  but,  notwithstanding  this 
assistance,  when  the  Building  Committee  presented  its 
report  on  October  2,  1820,  it  appeared  that  the  cost  of 
the  additions  and  alterations  had  so  far  exceeded  the 
estimates  that  a  considerable  debt  had  been  incurred. 
It  is  creditable  to  the  Trustees  that  they  did  not  allow 
this  embarrassment  to  hinder  them  either  from  rewarding 
a  faithful  member  of  the  Faculty,  or  from  undertaking  a 
necessary  extension  of  the  College  curriculum.  On  the 
resignation  of  Dr.  Wilson,  who  was  obliged  by  increasing 
infirmities  to  lay  down  his  Professorship,  the  Trustees, 
in  consideration  of  his  "faithful  and  eminently  useful 
services  during  eight  and  twenty  years,  of  his  advanced 
age,  and  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  his  situation," 
granted  him  a  liberal  annuity  for  life.  A  division  of  the 
Professorship  of  Mathematics  and  Natural  Philosophy 
having  been  found  to  be  necessary,  it  was  divided  accord- 
ingly into  two  Professorships  of  Mathematics  and  Astron- 
omy, and  of  Natural  and  Experimental  Philosophy,  the 
former  remaining  to  Dr.  Adrain,  and  Mr.  James  Renwick 
being  appointed  to  the  latter.  Dr.  Wilson  was  succeeded 
by  his  adjunct  professor,  Mr.  Nathaniel  F.  Moore,  and 
Mr.  Charles  Anthon  was  promoted  to  the  position  vacated 
by  Professor  Moore.  Thus,  for  the  first  time  in  its 
history,  most  of  the  Chairs  of  the  Faculty  of  Columbia 
were  filled  by  her  own  alumni,  Professors  McVickar, 
Moore,  Anthon,  and  Renwick  having  all  been  educated 
and  graduated  at  Columbia,  whereas,  before  1817,  only 
three  professors,  Bishop  Moore,  the  Rev.  John  Bowden, 
and  the  Rev.  John  Vardill  (who  probably  never  entered 
on  the  duties  of  his  office),  were  graduates  of  Columbia. 

On  November  3,  1823,  Mr.  James  Kent  was  reappointed 
to  the  Professorship  of  Law  which  he  had  previously 
held  from  1798  to  1818;  and  it  was  under  this  appoint- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  329 

ment  that  this  distinguished  American  jurist  delivered 
the  lectures  which  were  afterwards  expanded  into  his 
great  Commentaries. 

In  October,  1827,  the  Trustees  resolved  to  establish  a 
Grammar  School  under  the  control  of  the  Faculty  of  the 
College,  but  the  plan  failed  of  success  until  it  had  been 
considerably  modified,  and  even  then  it  did  not  realize 
the  hopes  of  the  Trustees.  In  1829  a  building  was  pro- 
vided for  its  accommodation  on  the  College  ground,  and 
Mr.  John  D.  Ogilby  was  appointed  Master.  The  Gram- 
mar School  continued  to  exist  until  1864,  when  it  was 
wholly  discontinued. 

In  October,  1829,  Dr.  Harris  died,  after  a  service  as 
President  of  over  eighteen  years,  for  thirteen  of  which  he 
had  been  in  full  charge  of  the  College.  On  December 
9th  the  Hon.  William  A.  Duer,  LL.D.,  was  appointed 
to  succeed  him. 

Early  in  1830,  an  important  modification  of  the  College 
system  was  introduced,  with  a  view  of  rendering  the 
benefits  of  education  more  generally  accessible  to  the 
community.  The  existing  course  of  study,  which  was 
now  called  the  Full  Course,  was  maintained  and  enlarged, 
and  the  time  of  daily  attendance  upon  the  professors 
which  was  required  of  students  was  materially  increased. 
At  the  same  time,  another  course  of  study,  called  the 
Scientific  and  Literary  Course,  was  established.  It  was 
to  be  open  to  others  besides  matriculated  students,  and 
all  persons  who  availed  themselves  of  its  privileges  were 
to  be  at  liberty  to  use  them  at  their  own  discretion 
and  to  such  an  extent  as  they  might  find  to  be  desirable. 
In  1836,  both  courses  of  study  were  again  revised  and 
enlarged.  The  Scientific  and  Literary  Course  in  particu- 
lar was  greatly  extended,  and  in  order  that  the  scientific 
branches  of  both  courses  might  be  more  efficiently  con- 


330  MEMOIRS  OF 

ducted,  a  sum  of  $10,000  was  appropriated  for  the  pur- 
chase of  additional  apparatus  and  for  the  addition  to  the 
Library  of  the  necessary  books  of  reference  and  illustra- 
tion. This  appropriation  is  particularly  remarkable,  as 
the  sum  of  12300  had  been  expended  during  the  previous 
year  in  the  purchase  of  two  collections  of  minerals.  It 
was  hoped  and  believed  that  the  Scientific  and  Literary 
Course  would  be  acceptable  to  many  students  who  might 
lack  the  time  or  the  means  to  prosecute  the  Full  Course, 
but  this  hopeful  expectation  was  disappointed.  From  the 
very  first,  the  number  of  students  was  small,  and  it 
steadily  grew  smaller;  from  1839  to  1843  there  were 
in  all  but  four;  in  1843,  there  was  not  one,  and  in  that 
year  the  Literary  and  Scientific  Course  was  altogether 
discontinued. 

On  April  13,  1837,  Columbia  College  celebrated  with 
great  solemnity  the  Fiftieth  Anniversary  of  its  reorgani- 
zation. The  Trustees,  the  Faculty,  the  Alumni,  and  the 
Students  united  in  appropriate  ceremonies.  In  the  morn- 
ing, after  suitable  religious  services  at  St.  John's  Chapel, 
an  oration  and  a  poem  were  delivered  by  Alumni  who 
had  been  previously  appointed;  odes  in  several  languages, 
which  had  been  composed  and  set  to  music  for  the  occa- 
sion, were  sung;  and  honorary  degrees  were  conferred 
upon  several  distinguished  gentlemen.  In  the  evening 
the  College  was  decorated  and  illuminated,  and  thrown 
open  for  the  reception  and  entertainment  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  invited  guests. 

In  January,  1838,  the  College  Library  received  a  val- 
uable addition  by  the  purchase  of  the  Library  of  the 
former  Professor  Moore.  At  the  same  time,  Professor 
Moore  was  appointed  Librarian  and  was  occupied  for 
about  a  year  in  arranging  the  Library  and  preparing  a 
catalogue. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  331 

In  May,  1842,  on  the  resignation  of  President  Duer, 
after  a  severe  and  long-continued  illness,  Nathaniel  F. 
Moore,  LL.D.,  was  appointed  in  his  place. 

In  1843,  a  Professorship  of  the  German  Language  and 
Literature  was  established  on  an  endowment  of  120,000, 
bequeathed  for  that  purpose  by  Frederick  Gebhard,  Esq. 
In  the  month  of  June  following,  John  Lewis  Tellkampf, 
U.I.D.,  of  Gottingen,  was  appointed  Gebhard  Professor, 
and  at  the  same  time,  the  German  Language  and  Litera- 
ture was  made  a  part  of  the  undergraduate  course. 
Certain  difficulties  which  had  been  partly  foreseen  inter- 
fered with  the  success  of  this  new  arrangement.  In  1847, 
Professor  Tellkampf  resigned  and  was  succeeded  by  the 
Rev.  Henry  I.  Schmidt,  under  whom  the  study  of  German 
in  the  two  highest  classes  was  made  voluntary.  That 
arrangement  continued  until  1857,  when  the  study  of 
German  was  made  wholly  voluntary  in  all  classes,  but 
was  encouraged  by  the  establishment  of  annual  prizes, 
which  had  a  good  effect. 

In  December,  1844,  a  chair  of  Elocution  was  estab- 
lished for  the  instruction  of  the  Freshman  class. 

In  1848,  shortly  after  the  death  of  Chancellor  Kent, 
William  Betts,  A.M.,  an  alumnus  and  trustee  of  the 
College,  was  elected  Professor  of  Law,  and  in  the  winter 
of  1849-50  he  delivered  a  course  of  lectures  on  Interna- 
tional Law. 

On  the  resignation  of  Dr.  Moore,  in  July,  1849,  the 
Presidency  again  became  vacant,  and  in  the  month  of 
November,  Charles  King,  Esq.,  LL.D.,  was  elected  his 
successor.  It  was  during  the  early  years  of  President 
King's  administration  that  the  Trustees  made  the  dispo- 
sition of  the  tract  of  land  known  as  the  Botanic  Garden, 
which  has  since  proved  to  be  so  advantageous  to  the 
College. 


332 


MEMOIRS  OF 


In  November,  1854,  Dr.  Renwick  resigned  his  Pro- 
fessorship, and  an  order  of  Emeritus  Professors  was  then 
established  for  the  purpose  of  acknowledging  the  obli- 
gation of  the  College  to  professors  who  should  have  de- 
voted themselves  to  its  service  for  twenty  years  or  more. 
These  professors  were  to  have  no  salaries  or  stated  duties, 
but  were  to  enjoy  certain  honors  and  privileges.  Each  of 
them  was  to  be  entitled  to  sit  with  the  Faculty  on  public 
occasions,  and  to  deliver  an  annual  lecture  in  the  College; 
his  portrait  was  to  be  painted  at  the  expense  of  the  Col- 
lege and  hung  in  some  proper  place  in  the  College  build- 
ing ;  and  he  was  to  have  the  right  of  nomination  to  one 
free  scholarship,  to  be  called  by  his  name.  Dr.  Renwick 
was  the  first  Emeritus  Professor,  and  since  his  time  the 
following  gentlemen  have  received  the  same  honor :  the 
Rev.  Dr.  John  McVickar,  Dr.  Charles  Davies,  Dr.  Henry 
James  Anderson. 

From  1853  to  1857,  the  Trustees  were  anxiously  occu- 
pied with  the  plans  for  the  removal  of  the  College  from 
College  Place  to  some  other  part  of  the  city,  and  for  the 
inauguration  of  a  liberal  system  of  post-graduate  instruc- 
tion. In  1857,  the  old  buildings  were  abandoned  and 
the  College  was  opened  on  the  very  spot  and  in  the  very 
building  formerly  occupied  by  the  New  York  Institution 
for  the  Instruction  of  the  Deaf  and  Dumb,  in  which  Dr. 
Barnard  had  served  from  1832  until  1838. 

In  forming  their  plans  for  the  proposed  postgraduate 
courses,  the  Trustees  contemplated  a  certain  modification 
of  the  undergraduate  course  as  it  then  existed.  For  the 
first  three  years,  the  Classical  Course  was  to  be  main- 
tained, "with  adaptations,  however,  to  future  studies, 
both  sub-graduate  and  post-graduate  "  ;  but  in  addition 
to  the  Classical  Course,  there  was  to  be  another  "  Coordi- 
nate and  mainly  Scientific  Course,  with  due  regard  to 


FKEDEBICK  A.  P.   BAKNARD  333 

classical  and  ethical  instruction,  to  occupy  two  years,  and 
a  third,  when  the  demand  should  justify  it.  These  two 
courses,  proceeding  in  nearly  parallel  lines,  were  to  meet 
at  the  commencement  of  the  Senior  year  and  the  students 
were  to  be  prepared  to  undertake  any  of  the  studies  to 
be  thereafter  taught." 

Three  schools  were  to  be  established,  a  School  of  Phi- 
losophy or  Philology,  a  School  of  Jurisprudence  and  His- 
tory, and  a  School  of  Mathematics  and  Physical  Science, 
into  one  of  which  the  students  were  to  be  required  to  enter 
at  the  beginning  of  the  Senior  year,  and  at  the  end  of 
that  year,  those  who  had  pursued  the  earlier  Classical 
Course  were  to  receive  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts, 
and  those  who  had  pursued  the  Scientific  Course,  the 
degree  of  Bachelor  of  Science.  It  was  expected  and 
intended  that  the  studies  of  these  schools  would  be  con- 
tinued in  a  post-graduate  course  for  two  years  longer. 
In  accordance  with  this  plan,  several  professors  were 
added  to  the  Faculty  and  the  Senior  class  was  divided 
into  Schools  of  Letters,  Jurisprudence,  and  Science  ;  but 
it  was  speedily  discovered  that  the  scheme  could  not  be 
carried  out ;  the  post-graduate  course  never  had  any 
real  existence ;  after  one  year  of  abortive  experiment  it 
was  practically  abandoned,  and  in  1859  the  division  of 
the  Senior  class  into  schools  was  altogether  abolished. 

The  Professorship  of  Law,  which  had  formerly  been 
held  by  Chancellor  Kent,  and  to  which  Mr.  Betts  was 
elected  in  1848,  had  been  merely  a  lectureship,  and  on 
the  withdrawal  of  Mr.  Betts  in  1854,  the  chair  had  been 
allowed  to  remain  vacant.  A  few  law  schools  existed  at 
that  time  in  other  parts  of  the  country,  but  they  attracted 
no  considerable  body  of  students,  and  candidates  for  ad- 
mission to  the  bar  generally  pursued  their  studies  in  the 
office  of  some  reputable  lawyer.  It  was  felt,  however, 


334  MEMOIRS   OF 

that  in  the  city  of  New  York  the  establishment  of  a 
school  in  which  the  principles  and  practice  of  the  law 
might  be  studied  under  competent  instructors  ought  no 
longer  to  be  delayed.  Accordingly,  in  1858,  the  Trus- 
tees of  Columbia  College  proceeded  to  organize  a  Law 
School  under  the  supervision  and  control  of  Professor 
Theodore  W.  Dwight,  of  Hamilton  College,  who  was 
appointed  Warden  and  Professor  of  Municipal  Law. 
Professors  Francis  Lieber  and  Charles  M.  Nairne  were 
associated  with  him,  and  in  1860,  Dr.  John  Ordronaux 
was  appointed  Professor  of  Medical  Jurisprudence.  Dur- 
ing the  first  year  of  its  existence,  the  exercises  of  the 
school  were  held  at  the  rooms  of  the  Historical  Society 
in  Eleventh  Street,  in  order  that  they  might  be  conven- 
ient of  access  to  students  who  were  employed  in  lawyers' 
offices,  and  in  the  ensuing  year  it  was  removed  to  Lafay- 
ette Place,  nearly  opposite  the  Astor  Library.  From  the 
day  of  its  opening,  the  Law  School  was  successful ;  and 
the  number  of  students  increased  from  year  to  year, 
beginning  with  35,  it  had  63  in  the  second  year,  103  in 
the  third,  117  in  the  fourth,  146  in  the  fifth,  and  in  1864, 
when  Dr.  Barnard  became  President  of  the  College,  the 
Law  School  had  171  students. 

Encouraged  by  the  success  of  the  Law  School,  the 
Trustees,  early  in  1863,  gave  serious  attention  to  a  plan 
prepared  by  Mr.  Thomas  Egleston,  Jr.,  for  the  establish- 
ment of  a  School  of  Mines  and  Metallurgy.  In  1864,  the 
plan  was  approved  and  adopted  by  the  Board  ;  Mr.  Egle- 
ston was  appointed  Professor  of  Mineralogy  and  Metal- 
lurgy; Brigadier-General  Francis  L.  Vinton  was  appointed 
Professor  of  Mining  Engineering ;  Charles  F.  Chandler, 
Ph.D.,  was  appointed  Professor  of  Analytical  and  Ap- 
plied Chemistry ;  arrangements  were  made  by  which  Pro- 
fessors Joy,  Peck,  Van  Amringe,  and  Rood,  of  the  College 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  335 

Faculty,  were  to  give  instruction  in  the  school,  and  on 
November  15,  1864,  a  few  months  after  Dr.  Barnard's 
appointment  as  President,  the  School  of  Mines  was 
formally  opened  in  rooms  assigned  to  it  in  the  College 
buildings. 

A  note  of  the  great  struggle  which  was  then  in  progress 
appears  in  a  record  of  the  College  under  date  of  October 
15,  1863,  when  Professor  McCulloh  was  expelled  from  his 
Professorship  "for  having  abandoned  his  post  and  joined 
the  Rebels." 

Early  in  the  next  year  President  King  resigned  his 
office,  and  on  May  18,  1864,  the  Rev.  F.  A.  P.  Barnard, 
S.T.D.,  LL.D.,  was  elected  President  of  Columbia  Col- 
lege. Dr.  Barnard  entered  upon  his  duties  in  the  month 
of  June,  and  on  the  3d  of  October  following  he  delivered 
his  Inaugural  Address  in  the  College  Chapel. 

The  careful  reader  of  the  foregoing  brief  and  inade- 
quate sketch  will  not  fail  to  observe  the  gradual  and 
irregular  but  progressive  development  of  the  university 
idea  in  an  institution  which  was  established  as  a  simple 
college  of  the  English  pattern.  In  one  way  and  another 
it  seems  from  the  first  to  have  tended  to  an  enlargement 
of  its  scope.  At  the  very  delivery  of  the  Charter  of 
King's  College  to  the  Board  of  Governors  in  1755,  the 
endowment  of  a  Professorship  of  Divinity  was  projected 
and  approved.  In  the  following  year,  though  the  study 
of  natural  science  in  English  colleges  had  as  yet  made 
little  progress,  the  Trustees  expended  a  considerable  sum 
of  money  in  the  purchase  of  instruments  which  were 
required  in  that  department.  In  1764,  Dr.  Clossy  was 
appointed  Professor  of  Natural  Philosophy.  Three  years 
later  a  Medical  School  was  established,  and  the  opening 
of  the  New  York  Hospital  not  long  afterwards  through 
the  influence  of  the  Faculty  of  Columbia  provided  the 


336  MEMOIRS   OF 

students  of  the  Medical  School  with  the  clinical  advan- 
tages which  are  indispensable  to  an  intelligent  study  of 
therapeutics.  This  is  a  creditable  record  for  an  institu- 
tion which  had  existed  less  than  twenty  years,  and  it 
shows  that  from  its  first  foundation  King's  College  was 
possessed,  so  to  speak,  with  a  genuine  university  instinct. 
After  its  reorganization  as  Columbia  College  we  find 
the  same  instinctive  outreaching  towards  the  functions 
of  the  University.  In  1787,  the  Medical  School  was 
reopened  simultaneously  with  the  College,  and  five  years 
later  it  was  put  under  the  charge  of  a  Dean  supported 
by  a  Faculty  of  seven  professors.  In  1793,  James  Kent 
was  appointed  as  the  first  Professor  of  Law,  and  con- 
tinued to  lecture  for  five  years,  when  the  financial  em- 
barrassments of  the  Board  constrained  them  to  suspend 
that  part  of  their  scheme.  At  the  opening  of  the  Col- 
lege in  1787,  natural  history,  chemistry,  agriculture,  and 
botany  were  added  to  the  former  curriculum,  and  in 
1798,  when  the  Trustees  were  compelled  by  the  lack  of 
means  to  contract  their  expenses  to  the  lowest  possible 
amount,  they  still  maintained  the  study  of  chemistry 
and  natural  history  as  indispensable  parts  of  the  College 
course.  In  1810,  though  they  were  still  in  difficulties, 
they  were  wise  enough  to  raise  the  standard  of  admission 
and  graduation,  and  expressed  the  belief  that  they  had 
been  enabled  to  lay  "  a  broader  and  stronger  foundation 
for  sound  education"  than  had  then  been  known  else- 
where in  this  country.  On  that  foundation  the  rearing 
of  the  structure  has  been  conducted  ever  since.  For 
many  years  financial  embarrassments  impeded  the  prog- 
ress of  the  Trustees  in  the  development  of  their  plans, 
and  later  on  the  problem  of  the  American  College  in 
its  curriculum  and  its  government  became  so  anxious 
a  care  to  all  who  were  called  to  grapple  with  it  as  to 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  337 

require  them  to  proceed  slowly  in  order  that  they  might 
proceed  surely.  But  the  former  plans  of  progress  were 
never  abandoned,  and  the  experiments  which  were  made 
were  all  in  the  line  of  progress.  In  1823,  Mr.  Kent  was 
reappointed  Professor  of  Law,  and  it  is  to  that  appoint- 
ment that  the  American  bar  owes  Chancellor  Kent's 
famous  Commentaries.  From  time  to  time  valuable  col- 
lections were  purchased  to  illustrate  the  studies  in  natural 
science  which  the  Trustees  steadily  encouraged.  In  1830, 
the  introduction  of  a  "  double  course  "  system,  though  it 
was  speedily  abandoned,  showed  that  the  Trustees  were 
grappling  with  the  new  problem  of  adapting  the  modern 
college  to  modern  needs.  The  establishment  of  a  chair 
of  German  was  one  of  the  earliest  practical  recognitions 
in  this  country  that  the  modern  languages  must  be  taught 
in  modern  schools.  From  1853  to  1857  the  Board  was 
occupied  in  making  plans  for  a  system  of  post-graduate 
studies,  including  modifications  of  the  undergraduate 
course  to  that  end.  The  effort  failed,  but  only  for  the 
time  being ;  and  the  Schools  of  Philosophy  and  Philol- 
ogy, of  Mathematics  and  Physical  Science,  and  of  Juris- 
prudence and  History,  which  were  projected  in  those  years 
were  prophetic  rather  than  premature.  By  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Law  School  under  Professor  Dwight  in  1858, 
another  Faculty  was  permanently  added  to  the  Faculties 
of  Arts  and  Medicine.  In  1863,  the  suggestion  of  found- 
ing a  Polytechnicum  under  the  name  of  a  School  of  Mines 
was  favorably  received,  and  in  the  following  year  the 
preliminary  steps  to  its  organization  were  taken. 

Such  was  the  institution  to  the  chief  charge  of  which 
Dr.  Barnard  was  called :  conservative,  without  rigidity ; 
progressive,  without  rashness  ;  reverent  to  the  learning  of 
the  past,  yet  open-minded  to  the  necessities  of  the  present. 
Columbia  College  had  been  moving  more  or  less  steadily 


338  MEMOIRS   OF 

towards  the  functions  and  dimensions  of  an  university  for 
more  than  a  hundred  years ;  and  with  its  School  of  Arts, 
its  School  of  Law,  and  its  School  of  Medicine  already  in 
existence,  and  its  School  of  Mines  hopefully  projected,  it 
might  without  arrogance  have  assumed  the  name  of  an 
university.  It  was  wiser  not  to  take  that  name  then.  A 
period  of  growth  and  natural  development  was  still  re- 
quired, and  it  was  the  high  privilege  of  Dr.  Barnard  to 
assume  the  chief  charge  of  Columbia  at  the  opening  of 
that  critical  period. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  339 


CHAPTER  XIII 

Dr.  Barnard  as  President  of  Columbia  College  —  His  efforts  in  behalf  of 
the  School  of  Mines  —  His  Inaugural  Address  on  the  relation  of  physi- 
cal science  to  revealed  religion  —  Denies  a  conflict  between  science 
and  religion  —  Opposition  of  religious  men  to  science  —  Its  cause,  its 
folly,  and  its  danger  —  Reasons  for  harmony  between  them  —  The  light 
of  science  is  a  light  of  revelation  —  Contrast  between  science  and  philo- 
sophical speculation  —  Miracle  —  Superstition  —  The  Bible  not  a  book 
of  science  —  Reasons  why  it  could  not  be  so  —  Evolution  —  Theory  and 
demonstration  —  Representatives  of  religion  ought  to  study  science,  and 
scientific  men  ought  to  study  religion. 

WHEN  Dr.  Barnard  was  called  to  the  Presidency  of 
Columbia  College,  he  was  fifty-five  years  of  age ;  his  dis- 
tinction as  an  educator  and  a  man  of  science  was  univer- 
sally acknowledged ;  his  physical  and  intellectual  faculties 
were  at  their  best ;  and  he  brought  to  the  service  of 
Columbia  a  breadth  and  maturity  of  judgment  which 
could  only  be  attained  by  original  thought  and  a  large 
and  varied  experience.  The  position  was  worthy  of  the 
man,  for  Columbia  College  was  an  historical  institution 
which  had  encountered  the  difficulties,  and  had  striven, 
not  unsuccessfully,  to  grapple  with  the  problems  con- 
nected with  the  development  of  academic  education  in 
America.  Though  a  college  in  name,  its  Trustees  had 
ever  sought  to  realize  the  character  and  to  fulfil  the  func- 
tions of  an  university ;  but  they  had  not  wholly  escaped 
the  dangers  which  attended  this  laudable  endeavor.  A 
simple  college,  as  Dr.  Barnard  had  always  strenuously 
maintained,  cannot  fulfil  the  functions  of  an  university. 
A  college  is  intended  primarily  and  supremely  to  train 
the  mind  ;  it  is  the  part  of  an  university  to  furnish 


340  MEMOIRS   OF 

trained  minds  with  special  schools  of  professional  and 
scientific  knowledge.  To  crowd  a  course  of  professional 
or  scientific  study  into  the  brief  curriculum  of  a  college 
cannot  but  fail  of  its  purpose,  since  it  obscures  the  single 
object  of  mental  discipline  which  is  the  purpose  of  the 
college,  while,  in  the  nature  of  things,  it  can  give  nothing 
more  than  a  smattering  of  the  sciences  which  it  labors  to 
impart.  At  the  time  of  Dr.  Barnard's  accession  to  the 
Presidency,  the  College  course  had  been  well  adapted  to 
its  proper  purpose,  and  the  Trustees  had  made  good  prog- 
ress towards  the  establishment  of  separate  professional 
and  scientific  schools.  It  has  already  been  recorded  that 
a  Medical  School  was  established  as  early  as  1767,  and  al- 
though it  was  subsequently  united  with  the  College  of 
Physicians  and  Surgeons,  it  still  retained  its  connection 
with  Columbia.  It  has  also  been  mentioned  that  a  Pro- 
fessorship of  Law  was  established  in  1793,  and  was  con- 
tinued at  intervals  for  many  years;  that  Chancellor 
Kent's  great  Commentaries  were  expanded  from  lectures 
which  he  delivered  as  a  Professor  of  the  College  in  1823 ; 
and  that  in  1858  a  Law  School  had  been  organized  under 
Professor  Theodore  W.  Dwight  as  Warden.  In  the  year 
preceding  Dr.  Barnard's  election,  a  School  of  Mines  had 
been  projected,  which  was  expected  and  intended  to  be 
begun,  though  in  a  very  modest  way,  in  the  following 
year.  Thus,  omitting  the  Medical  School,  the  educational 
institutions  of  Columbia  in  1864  were  the  College  proper, 
with  150  students,  and  a  Faculty  of  ten  full  Professors, 
one  Adjunct  Professor,  and  one  Tutor ;  a  School  of  Law, 
with  158  students,  under  a  Faculty  of  four  Professors; 
and  the  School  of  Mines,  which,  at  its  beginning  under 
Dr.  Barnard's  Presidency,  had  29  students,  with  three 
Professors,  five  Lecturers,  and  one  Assistant.  In  a  broad 
and  general  way,  the  organization  of  Columbia  College, 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  341 

at  the  time  of  Dr.  Barnard's  election,  was  fairly  repre- 
sentative, though  only,  of  course,  in  a  small  way,  of 
his  ideal.  In  the  College  proper  there  was  little  to  be 
changed,  and  the  special  schools  required  only  to  be  wisely 
developed  and  prudently  increased  in  number  to  fulfil 
the  functions  and  realize  the  ideal  of  a  true  university, 
that  is,  a  Universitas  Omnium  Scientiarum. 

From  the  first,  Dr.  Barnard  saw  his  opportunity  in  the 
projected  School  of  Mines.  The  plans  for  its  inaugura- 
tion which  had  been  formed  before  his  election  were  not 
only  tentative  but  timid.  If  they  should  miscarry,  an 
irreparable  damage  would  be  done  to  the  development  of 
the  university  idea ;  but  he  was  convinced  that  the  orig- 
inal plan  could  not  in  the  nature  of  things  be  successful, 
and  he  at  once  addressed  himself,  with  characteristic 
energy,  to  secure  for  the  infant  institution  a  reasonable 
chance  of  life.  The  following  memorandum  which  has 
been  found  among  his  papers  will  be  interesting  in  this 
connection : 

The  subject  which,  in  entering  upon  his  office,  occupied  first 
and  principally  the  attention  of  the  new  President,  was  the 
organization  of  a  school  to  be  associated  with  the  College  on 
the  general  plan  of  the  Ecole  des  Mines  in  Paris,  to  be  called 
the  Columbia  School  of  Mines.  A  proposition  of  this  nature 
had  been  laid  before  the  Trustees  during  the  previous  year  by 
Mr.  Thomas  Egleston,  a  graduate  of  the  Paris  school,  and  had 
been  favorably  received;  but  no  steps  had  yet  been  taken  to 
put  it  into  operation.  The  Trustees  had  approved  the  plan, 
but  had  declined  to  undertake  any  pecuniary  responsibility 
on  account  of  it;  the  friends  of  the  measure  proposing  to 
establish  it  upon  a  fund  to  be  raised  by  subscription.  A 
committee  of  Trustees  had  been  appointed  to  supervise  the 
affairs  of  the  school,  all  the  members  of  which  had  pledged 
themselves  not  to  ask  from  the  Board  any  appropriations  on 
account  of  it.  It  was  a  work  demanding  no  great  expenditure 


342  MEMOIRS   OF 

of  time  to  lay  out  the  plan  of  instruction  to  be  pursued  in  the 
school ;  but  it  was  an  undertaking  more  difficult  than  had  been 
anticipated  to  provide  for  the  support  of  the  teachers.  So 
sanguine  of  success,  however,  were  the  parties  interested  in  it, 
that  they  would  not  allow  the  realization  of  their  project  to  be 
retarded  by  any  merely  mercenary  consideration,  and  accord- 
ingly the  school  was  opened  with  a  haste  somewhat  reckless  of 
consequences  in  November,  1864,  before  an  adequate  provision 
had  been  made  for  defraying  even  its  ordinary  running  ex- 
penses. The  natural  consequence  followed,  that  in  less  than 
three  months  a  serious  debt  had  been  incurred,  which  there 
was  no  means  of  defraying.  The  President,  who  had  been 
made,  after  his  election,  a  member  of  the  committee,  proposed 
in  this  emergency  an  appeal  to  the  Board  of  Trustees,  but  he 
was  met  by  the  statement,  till  then  unknown  to  him,  that  the 
committee  were  all  pledged  not  to  go  to  the  Trustees  for 
money  under  any  circumstances.  His  reply  to  this  objection 
was,  "  Gentlemen,  I  was  not  appointed  to  this  committee  under 
any  such  conditions.  If  you  will  not  go  to  the  Trustees,  I 
will  do  so  alone.  This  school  meets  a  public  want.  It  ought 
to  be  sustained,  but  if  the  Trustees  do  not  sustain  it,  it  must 
fail.  If,  when  they  understand  the  facts,  they  refuse  to  sus- 
tain it,  it  will  be  time  to  shut  the  doors  ;  but  before  we  do  that, 
I  am  determined  that  it  shall  not  perish  for  lack  of  an  effort." 
At  the  next  meeting  of  the  Trustees,  accordingly,  the  President 
laid  the  facts  before  them,  and  made  an  earnest  appeal  for 
help.  This  was  something  so  unexpected  that  the  Board  were 
taken  by  surprise,  and  were  at  first  rather  indisposed  to  listen 
to  the  appeal.  The  decision  was  adjourned  to  a  later  day,  but 
at  length  a  resolution  was  adopted  to  pay  the  outstanding 
indebtedness  of  the  school  and  to  guarantee  its  maintenance 
for  the  current  and  next  succeeding  year,  and  to  leave  the 
question  of  future  measures  to  be  determined  by  the  success  or 
failure  of  the  school  as  an  educational  experiment.  At  the 
expiration  of  the  time  thus  limited,  the  school  had  taken 
so  strong  a  hold  of  the  popular  favor,  that  no  question  was 
ever  raised  as  to  the  advisability  of  its  perpetuation  or  discon- 
tinuance, and  it  has  since  been  regarded  as  an  established 
branch  of  the  University  system. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.    BARNARD  343 

Before  this  first  and  most  fortunate  exercise  of  his 
personal  and  official  influence,  and  indeed  before  he 
entered  upon  the  active  work  of  his  office,  President 
Barnard  had  the  address  to  secure  an  intelligent  and 
powerful  support  for  his  administration.  On  former 
occasions  he  had  shown  great  skill  in  attracting  public 
attention  and  in  gaining  public  confidence.  By  opportune 
publications  in  Alabama  he  had  so  won  the  esteem  of 
great  societies  that,  when  he  afterwards  found  it  neces- 
sary to  engage  in  a  controversy  on  "  College  Education," 
with  particular  reference  to  the  University  of  Alabama, 
he  was  able  to  maintain  his  cause  in  the  face  of  formida- 
ble opposition.  In  Mississippi,  when  he  proposed  his 
University  scheme,  he  chose  to  address  the  Board  of 
Trustees,  indeed,  but  in  such  a  way  as  first  to  reach  the 
people  of  the  State,  and  so  to  bring  a  powerful  popular 
influence  to  bear  at  once  upon  the  Board  by  which  his 
project  must  be  approved,  and  upon  the  Legislature  by 
which  the  means  to  accomplish  it  must  be  appropriated. 
At  the  present  juncture  he  was  perfectly  aware  that  his 
political  publications  had  had  much  to  do  with  his 
election  to  Columbia  ;  but  he  also  knew  that  in  the  work 
on  which  he  was  entering,  his  claim  to  public  confidence 
must  have  a  stronger  and  more  permanent  foundation 
than  that  of  political  or  even  patriotic  sympathy.  He 
therefore  resolved  to  address  himself  to  the  discussion 
of  a  subject  of  permanent  and  vital  interest  on  which 
contradictory  and  apparently  irreconcilable  opinions  were 
earnestly  maintained,  and  so  to  treat  it  as  to  gain  the 
confidence  and  assure  himself  of  the  support  of  both 
sides.  The  occasion  lay  before  him  in  the  ceremonies 
of  his  inauguration ;  the  topic  was  suggested  by  the 
establishment  of  a  scientific  school  in  connection  with  the 
College.  At  that  time  men  had  begun  to  talk  rather 


344  MEMOIES   OP 

loudly  of  "the  conflict  between  science  and  religion." 
On  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  political  excitement  and  the 
anxieties  of  the  war  had  withdrawn  the  thoughts  of  men 
from  speculative  studies,  but  from  abroad  there  came  the 
echoes  of  an  eager  controversy  on  the  evolutionary  hypoth- 
esis, and  students  at  home  were  already  engaging  in  the 
dispute.  Devout  Christians  passionately  denounced  the 
daring  speculations  of  science  as  blasphemous  denials  of 
revealed  religion,  and  men  of  science  were  only  too  ready, 
on  their  part,  to  accept  the  admission  that,  if  what  they 
deemed  to  be  ascertained  scientific  facts  were  true,  the 
Christian  religion  must  be  false.  In  Europe  the  lines  of 
battle  were  clearly  drawn ;  in  America  it  was  still  possible 
to  avert  an  open  conflict  between  parties  who  ought  never 
to  have  been  opposed,  since  they  were  alike  engaged  in 
the  search  for  truth  in  their  several  domains.  No  man 
was  better  qualified  to  intervene  in  an  endeavor  to  avert  so 
fruitless  and  needless  a  contention  than  President  Barnard, 
whose  devotion  to  science  was  everywhere  known,  and  of 
whose  sincere  belief  of  the  Christian  religion  there  could 
be  no  question ;  and  he  sagaciously  selected  as  the  subject 
of  his  Inaugural  Address  "  The  Relation  of  Physical  Sci- 
ence to  Revealed  Religion." 

The  views  which  were  presented  in  this  address  were 
by  no  means  novel ;  but  although  they  had  a  certain 
freshness  then  which  they  have  not  now,  it  may  be  well 
to  give  an  outline  of  them,  in  order  to  show  the  great 
skill  with  which  the  speaker  treated  his  subject.  In  an 
address  from  the  Alumni  which  was  made  to  him  at  the 
time  of  his  inauguration,  the  following  sentence  occurred : 
"  You  will  justly  appreciate  the  claims  of  modern  knowl- 
edge ;  but  you  will  not  let  it  be  believed  that  she  has  come 
with  any  mission  to  contest,  much  less  to  curtail,  our  una- 
bridged Inheritance  of  Faith."  In  reply  Dr.  Barnard  said : 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  345 

I  think  I  do  not  misinterpret  you  when  I  presume  that  your 
words  have  been  chosen  with  reference  to  the  imaginary  con- 
flict asserted  by  some  to  exist  between  the  teachings  of  the 
sacred  oracles  of  our  religion  and  certain  of  the  conclusions 
of  modern  scientific  research.  I  do  not  recognize  such  a  con- 
flict, nor  admit  its  possibility.  All  true  science  is  to  me  but  a 
form  of  revelation  from  the  one  great  Author  of  all  truth. 
I  cannot  conceive  that  He  in  whom  there  is  no  variableness 
nor  shadow  of  turning  will  ever  be  found  to  contradict 
in  His  works  the  declarations  which  He  has  made  in  His 
written  Word.  And  whatever  may  be  the  amount  or  the 
seeming  value  of  that  truth  which  has  rewarded,  by  its  dis- 
covery, the  faithful  labor  of  modern  scientific  investigators, 
or  whatever  the  grandeur  of  the  multiplied  achievements  of 
human  intellect  in  every  department  of  inquiry,  I  esteem  all 
these  things  combined  as  lighter  than  vanity,  unless  accompa- 
nied by  that  better  and  higher  and  purer  knowledge  which 
lifts  men  above  the  material  world  in  which  they  dwell,  and 
makes  them  wise  unto  salvation. 

Having  thus  in  a  preliminary  way  briefly  stated  his 
own  position,  he  proceeded  to  his  inaugural  discourse. 
He  declared  himself  to  be  unequivocally  devoted  to  that 
view  of  college  education  which  regards  it  as  primarily 
intended  to  furnish  a  system  of  mental  culture.  He 
insisted  that  the  system  of  education  pursued  in  colleges 
like  Columbia  was  admirably  adapted  to  prepare  the 
minds  of  students  for  any  pursuit  or  position  to  which 
they  might  afterwards  be  called,  and  he  proclaimed 
his  opposition  to  the  dangerous  assaults  and  the  blindly 
destructive  spirit  which  were  seeking  to  sacrifice  it  to 
visionary  schemes  of  higher  utility.  After  this  brief 
statement  of  his  educational  faith,  he  next  expressed  his 
full  sympathy  with  the  purpose  of  the  Trustees  of  Colum- 
bia to  extend  the  field  of  instruction  occupied  by  the  insti- 
tution. Their  design,  he  admitted,  could  not  at  once  be 
carried  out  in  all  its  completeness.  It  must  begin  with 


346  MEMOIRS   OF 

certain  determinate  branches  of  knowledge  which  would  be 
suggested  by  the  actual  demand  of  the  community,  and  at 
the  present  time  he  thought  that  the  beginning  ought 
to  be  made  by  supplying  a  School  of  the  Physical  Sciences 
as  applied  to  the  arts.  The  plan  of  such  a  school,  under 
the  name  of  a  School  of  Mines,  had  been  already  adopted, 
and,  if  successful,  it  would  be  a  nucleus  around  which 
others  might  cluster.  The  establishment  of  a  School  of 
Physical  Sciences  in  connection  with  a  college  of  the 
older  learning  naturally  suggested  the  theme  of  his  dis- 
course. 

While  my  life  [he  said]  has  been  principally  devoted  to 
the  cause  of  education  in  general,  it  is  known,  I  believe,  that 
my  own  special  pursuits  have  been  connected  with  the  science 
of  nature.  I  love  that  study  both  because  it  is  beautiful  in 
itself  and  because  its  influence  upon  the  mind  and  upon  the 
character  seems  to  ine  to  be  eminently  salutary.  I  believe 
that  there  is  no  study  of  which  the  legitimate  tendencies  are 
more  distinctly  to  foster  in  man  the  spirit  of  humility,  or  to 
awaken  within  him  feelings  of  profound  reverence  toward 
God.  I  believe,  indeed,  that  in  spreading  out  His  wonderful 
works  before  us,  and  clothing  them  with  so  many  attractions, 
it  has  been  the  manifest  purpose  of  the  Creator  to  make  them 
the  means  of  drawing  men  to  Himself.  And  I  believe  that 
the  religious  sentiment  thus  naturally  inspired  is  one  which 
disposes  the  soul  to  receive  with  delight  and  gratitude  those 
more  distinct  announcements  of  Himself  and  of  His  purpose 
toward  men,  which  He  has  made  in  His  written  Word. 

It  was  nevertheless  true,  he  continued,  that  modern 
physical  science  had  been  resisted  from  its  earliest  begin- 
nings by  jealous  suspicion  and  active  opposition  from 
the  guardians  of  religion.  This  was  not  so  strange  as 
it  appeared ;  for  before  the  adoption  of  the  inductive 
method  of  scientific  inquiry,  there  was  already  in  exist- 
ence a  species  of  natural  science  which  rested  chiefly 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  347 

upon  hypothesis,  but  which  was  supposed  to  be  founded 
upon  the  authority  of  Holy  Scripture.  Many  beliefs  of 
a  purely  scientific  character  were  supposed  to  be  founded 
on  revelation  and  were  held  as  dogmas  of  religion,  so 
that  any  different  doctrine  must  be  denounced  without 
inquiry  as  heretical.  Thus,  in  its  very  birth,  modern 
science  was  confronted  with  a  formidable  opposition  from 
the  religious  world,  and  although  the  philosophy  of  the 
Middle  Ages  had  been  long  exploded,  the  breach  between 
science  and  religion  which  had  its  beginning  then,  had 
never  been  entirely  healed.  Nature  still  continued  to  be 
studied  in  the  Bible  by  the  light  of  philology ;  and  the 
results  of  biblical  study  were  made  the  touchstone  of  con- 
clusions drawn  from  careful  and  experimental  studies  of 
nature  itself.  This  process,  Dr.  Barnard  maintained,  ought 
to  be  inverted ;  science  should  be  used  as  a  torch  by  which 
to  read  the  Scriptures,  or,  at  least,  as  a  clue  to  their 
interpretation.  Unfortunately,  this  view  of  the  case 
had  been  received  thus  far  with  very  limited  favor  by 
teachers  of  religion ;  and  thus  from  ancient  controversies 
which  had  perished  from  the  memories  of  men,  another 
and  more  recent  cause  of  dispute  had  sprung  into  life. 
The  discouragement  of  scientific  research  by  the  prejudice 
of  a  powerful  but  ill-informed  public  opinion  had  had 
injurious  consequences  to  the  progress  of  science  ;  but  in 
the  end,  it  could  not  fail,  if  continued,  to  be  equally 
injurious  to  the  cause  of  religion.  It  was  not  possible 
that  scientific  research  should  cease,  nor  that  scientific 
men  should  forego  convictions  which  were  founded  upon 
complete  inductive  evidence.  If  religion  disclaimed 
those  convictions,  men  of  science  would  be  driven  to 
disclaim  religion,  and  thus,  without  any  choice  of  their 
own,  the  whole  weight  of  their  great  authority  would  be 
marshalled  in  opposition  to  the  truth  of  the  Bible. 


348  MEMOIRS   OF 

This  was  a  controversy  which  men  of  science  had  not 
invited  and  did  not  provoke. 

It  is  the  mistaken  friends  of  religion  themselves  who  insist 
on  occupying  the  perilous  position,  that,  if  modern  science  be 
true,  the  Bible  must  be  false.  It  is  they  who  deride  and  ridi- 
cule schemes  of  interpretation  honestly  suggested  with  a  view 
to  reconcile  the  language  of  sacred  writ  with  the  teachings  of 
nature  ;  and  who,  with  singular  lack  of  wisdom,  maintain  that 
no  such  reconcilement  is  possible.  They  will  not  recognize  the 
fact  that,  in  planting  themselves  upon  this  ground,  they  are 
doing  more  to  subvert  religion  and  bring  the  Bible  into  dis- 
credit among  men  than  all  the  speculative  atheists  like  Spinoza, 
and  all  the  ingeniously  logical  sceptics  like  Hume,  and  all 
the  malignant  scoffers  like  Voltaire,  combined,  have  ever  been 
able  to  accomplish.  In  spite  of  the  most  determined  efforts 
on  the  part  of  these  several  classes  of  enemies,  the  Bible  still 
holds  its  place  in  human  reverence;  but  let  it  be  once  dis- 
tinctly settled,  as  the  final  and  unalterable  decision  of  the  re- 
ligious world,  that  that  volume  makes  it  our  religious  duty  to 
disbelieve  and  reject  the  perfectly  demonstrable  truths  disclosed 
to  us  by  such  a  science,  for  example,  as  geology,  and  it  needs 
no  extraordinary  prescience  to  perceive  that,  before  another 
generation  shall  have  passed  away,  its  authority  will  be  utterly 
destroyed.  It  has  astonished  me  that  there  should  be  so  many 
good  men  who  do  not  see  this  danger.  It  has  astonished  me 
still  more  that  there  should  be  so  many  who  do  see  it  very 
clearly,  and  yet  imagine  that  it  may  be  averted  by  putting  a 
ban  upon  science  and  endeavoring  to  suppress  its  cultiva- 
tion. Such  efforts  are,  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  futile. 
Truth  cannot  be  frowned  out  of  existence,  nor  is  there  any 
weight  of  human  authority  heavy  enough  to  keep  it  down. 
On  the  other  hand,  error,  in  the  field  of  physical  inquiry, 
needs  neither  persecution  nor  denunciation  to  disarm  it  of  its 
power  to  harm;  it  has  only  to  be  let  alone,  and  it  will  inevi- 
tably die  of  itself. 

Having  thus  shown  the  danger  to  religion  which  would 
be  involved  in  a  fruitless  antagonism  with  science,  Dr. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BAENAED  349 

Barnard  next  proceeded  to  set  forth  reasons  why  there 
should  be  peace.  He  urged  that  there  is  nothing  in  the 
ends  which  science  has  in  view  which  ought  to  alarm  the 
most  devout  believer  in  revelation,  for  the  only  object  of 
science  is  the  ascertainment  of  truth ;  in  the  pursuit  of 
truth,  science  rightly  disregards  all  previous  opinions. 
Many  beliefs  which  were  once  universal  had  no  other 
foundation  than  ignorance  or  superstition  ;  and  so  experi- 
ence has  justified  the  investigator  of  nature  in  refusing  to 
be  biassed  by  opinions  which  may  have  no  better  founda- 
tion. The  researches  of  science  are  confined  to  the  physi- 
cal world,  and  although,  even  there,  her  range  is  limited  by 
the  range  of  human  observation  and  by  the  imperfect 
power  of  the  human  understanding,  yet  within  those  limits 
her  methods  are  sure.  When  she  has  reached  results  that 
are  verified  by  observation,  those  results  are  unquestion- 
able. For  teachers  of  religion  to  deny  or  to  denounce 
them  is  simply  idle  ;  and  it  is  as  foolish  as  it  is  idle,  for 
the  scientific  spirit  which  prompts  men  to  an  investigation 
of  nature,  springs  from  that  desire  to  know,  and  that  ca- 
pacity to  enjoy  knowledge,  which  have  been  implanted  in 
man  by  his  Creator.  Scientific  research  is  therefore  in 
accordance  with  God's  will ;  to  resist  it  is  to  resist  God's 
will ;  and  to  refuse  to  accept  the  truth  which  God  reveals 
to  inquiries  which  He  himself  had  prompted  and  ordained, 
is  to  refuse  a  true  light  of  divine  revelation.  A  religious 
man  ought  to  welcome  every  light  of  revelation,  and  since 
truth  is  never  inconsistent  with  itself,  there  ought  to  be 
no  fear  of  loss  of  truth  from  the  discovery  of  new  truth. 
No  truth  of  science  either  is  or  ever  can  be  inconsistent 
with  any  truth  of  religion  ;  in  fact,  religion  and  science 
must  both  alike  ultimately  rest  upon  a  basis  of  reason.  If 
the  conclusions  which  science  claims  to  have  fully  estab- 
lished are  not  to  be  relied  on,  then  nothing  in  the  whole 


350  MEMOIRS   OF 

circle  of  human  knowledge  is  certain ;  and  on  the  other 
hand, 

the  fact  of  revelation  itself  is  ascertained  to  us  by  evidence 
offered  to  the  reason.  It  is  a  fact  purely  historical,  to  be  ex- 
amined precisely  as  other  historical  facts  are  examined.  If  we 
are  competent  to  judge  of  its  credibility,  if  we  are  even  justi- 
fied in  asserting  that  we  know  its  truth,  then  certainly  we  may 
reasonably  claim  that  we  are  capable  of  tracing  effects  in  the 
material  world  to  their  physical  causes,  more  especially  when, 
in  our  personal  experience,  we  have  been  familiar  with  the 
operation  of  those  causes  all  our  lives. 

But  these  physical  causes,  these  powers  of  nature,  as  they 
are  called,  what  are  they  ?  If  we  suppose  that  they  exist  with- 
out God,  that  they  operate  by  any  inherent  energy  of  their 
own,  we  are  pantheists,  we  have  no  need  of  God  at  all,  our 
only  God  is  nature.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  we  suppose 
that  they  are  only  modes  through  which  God  sees  fit  to  mani- 
fest His  own  energy,  the  truths  to  which  we  are  led  by  their 
attentive  study  are  nothing  less  than  revelations.  They  de- 
mand our  acceptance  not  merely  upon  the  authority  of  imper- 
fect human  reason,  but  as  being  directly  vouched  for  by  God 
Himself.  The  distinction  commonly  made  between  nature  and 
revelation,  therefore,  as  means  through  which  we  may  be  per- 
mitted to  know  God,  is  in  this  view  unimportant,  perhaps  prej- 
udicial to  the  interests  of  true  religion.  It  is,  at  any  rate,  a 
distinction  of  form  merely,  and  not  of  essence.  To  the  prophet 
God  speaks  through  His  Spirit,  to  the  philosopher  through  His 
works :  in  either  case  the  truth  of  the  communication  rests 
upon  the  same  guaranty. 

Whatever  conflict  there  had  been  between  science  and 
religion  had  been  manifestly  founded  upon  misappre- 
hensions on  the  religious  side.  So  far  as  the  scientific 
world  must  be  held  responsible  for  it,  the  responsibility, 
generally  speaking,  must  be  laid  upon  sciolists  rather  than 
upon  men  of  acknowledged  eminence.  It  is  true  that  dis- 
tinguished students  of  nature,  and  even  original  discover- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  351 

ers,  have  been  sceptics  in  religion,  but  not  more  frequently 
than  any  other  class  of  men  of  equal  mark,  and  Dr.  Bar- 
nard proclaimed  his  solemn  conviction  that  the  tendency 
is  strongly  in  the  opposite  direction. 

I  believe  [he  said]  that  the  study  of  nature  tends  positively 
to  foster  the  spirit  of  humility,  of  self-abasement,  of  rev- 
erence, of  devotion.  I  believe,  indeed,  that  it  is  the  only  study, 
except  that  of  the  Bible  itself,  that  does  so.  With  the  study  of 
language  or  of  abstract  mathematics  it  cauuot  iu  this  respect 
be  compared,  for  iu  regard  to  the  sentiments  just  spoken  of, 
their  influence  is  indifferent.  But  with  abstract  philosophy,  or 
even  with  that  theology  which  affects  philosophy,  the  compari- 
son is  easy;  for  the  world  is  full  of  instructive  examples. 
Philosophy,  I  suppose,  is  as  far  from  physical  science  as  it  is 
possible  to  be.  Philosophy  and  physics  are  each  other's  antip- 
odes, —  the  two  poles  of  their  intellectual  sphere.  .  .  .  These 
two  subjects,  philosophy  and  the  physical  sciences,  are  the  two 
and  we  may  almost  say  the  only  two,  which  stimulate  the  curi- 
osity of  men  to  know  the  causes  of  things,  which  lift  men's 
thoughts  to  the  First  Great  Cause  of  all  things.  The  first  of 
these,  rising  on  presumptuous  wings  into  the  limitless  region  of 
the  transcendental,  boldly  essays  to  bring  God  Himself  within 
the  grasp  of  the  finite  intellect ;  but  baffled  in  the  vain  endeavor, 
ends  usually  in  blotting  Him  out  of  existence,  or  confounding 
Him  with  His  works.  The  other,  bowing  before  the  august  ma- 
jesty which  it  dares  not  attempt  to  conceive,  seeks,  in  a  lowly 
and  teachable  spirit,  to  comprehend  some  little  fragments  of 
these  lower  works  themselves,  and  shrinking  from  the  arrogance 
which  would  demand  what  God  is,  limits  itself  to  the  humble 
and  reverential  inquiry,  "What  hath  God  wrought?"  The 
very  statement  of  the  case  is  sufficient  to  show  the  relative 
tendencies  of  these  studies.  Philosophy  may  no  doubt  be  pur- 
sued in  a  Christian  spirit ;  but  it  has  had,  in  point  of  fact,  too 
often  the  fatal  effect  to  undermine,  subvert,  and  destroy  in  its 
devotees  all  belief  in  the  personality  of  God,  and  so  to  obliter- 
ate every  sentiment  of  fear  or  reverence  for  Him  in  the  human 
heart.  Physics,  on  the  other  hand,  by  constantly  presenting 
new  and  ever-varying  examples  of  power  and  forethought  and 


352  MEMOIRS  OF 

design  in  the  adaptation  of  means  to  ends,  fosters  and  cherishes 
into  ever-increasing  strength  the  conviction  that  God  is,  that 
God  reigns,  that  He  works  perpetually  before  us  now,  that  by 
Him  all  things  were  made,  and  without  Him  was  nothing  made 
that  was  made.  Now  what  if  there  has  been  here  and  there  a 
physicist  who  disowned  revelation  ?  How  many,  unfortunately, 
are  there  who  are  not  physicists  nor  philosophers  who  have 
done  the  same !  This  latter  fact  proves  that  men  may  be  per- 
verse without  any  obvious  perverting  influence;  the  former 
that  they  may  be  so  in  spite  of  influences  positively  salutary. 

Assuming  now  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  discovery 
of  truth,  which  is  the  only  object  of  science,  to  disquiet 
any  sincere  believer  in  the  truth  of  revelation,  Dr.  Barnard 
next  maintained  that  the  same  remark  might  be  extended 
to  the  results  to  which  scientific  investigation  leads.  The 
supreme  merit  of  science  is  that  it  leads  to  the  recognition 
of  law.  Through  all  the  domain  of  physical  research,  the 
discovery  of  law  had  been  the  student's  reward,  so  that 
it  is  now  accepted  as  an  axiom  in  physics  that  law  is  every- 
where present,  and  "law  in  nature  is  one  of  the  most 
conclusive  evidences  of  the  presence  and  power  of  God." 
"  Law  in  nature  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  God  in 
nature ;  and  natural  phenomena  are  the  direct  manifesta- 
tion of  divine  power." 

The  recognition  of  law  in  nature  is  not  destructive  of 
belief  in  miracle  to  the  mind  of  any  man  who  believes  in 
God. 

I  know  that  it  is  often  said  that  this  idea  of  the  invariability 
and  universality  of  law  tends  to  bring  into  discredit  those 
narratives  of  events  in  which  law  has  been  manifestly  sus- 
pended. This  is  another  of  the  grounds  on  which  science  and 
the  Bible  have  been  brought  into  conflict.  But  in  the  view  just 
taken  of  law,  the  reproach  thus  brought  against  science  is  with- 
out any  substantial  foundation.  For  if  law  is  but  the  mani- 
festation of  God's  power,  the  suspension  of  law  is  just  as  much 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  353 

so.  There  is,  however,  undoubtedly,  a  speculative  theology 
which  teaches  a  doctrine  widely  different  from  this  :  which 
beholds  in  law  an  energy  irresistible,  inexorable,  unalterable  ; 
which  makes,  that  is  to  say,  law  itself  God.  This,  at  least  if 
I  understand  it,  is  essentially  and  ultimately  the  meaning  of 
pantheism.  If  such  be  the  view  which  we  take  of  the  divine 
nature,  miraculous  occurrences  are,  I  admit,  quite  impossible ; 
for  the  God  of  pantheism  is  without  personality,  without  con- 
sciousness, without  will.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that 
pantheism  is  born  not  of  Physics,  but  of  Metaphysics  ;  that  it 
is  radically  at  variance  with  the  religion  of  the  Scriptures ; 
and  that,  after  we  have  consented  to  receive  its  more  general 
teachings,  the  particular  point  here  in  question  loses  whatever 
importance  or  interest  it  might  previously  have  possessed. 
To  the  Christian,  however,  or  even  to  the  Deist  who  admits 
that  God  is  anything  more  than  an  impersonal  figment,  the 
universality  of  law  in  nature  must  bring  a  grateful  confirma- 
tion to  his  faith. 

Dr.  Barnard  next  observed  that  while  science  is  favor- 
able to  sound  religion,  it  is  destructive  of  idle  superstitions 
by  which  religion  is  marred.  For  science  is  an  intelligent 
acquaintance  with  the  causes  of  things,  and  while  those 
causes  are  not  known,  a  phenomenon  which  is  not  under- 
stood is  apt  to  be  attributed  to  causes  above  nature. 
Incidents  of  which  the  causes  are  obscure  or  unperceived 
are  ascribed  to  agencies  and  influences  which  are  supposed 
to  control  events  and  affect  human  happiness,  and  which 
are  supposed  to  be  at  the  same  time  intelligent  or  malign. 
Particular  times  are  set  down  as  lucky  or  unlucky ;  par- 
ticular places  are  supposed  to  be  haunted  ;  particular 
acts  or  utterances  are  supposed  to  exert  a  mysterious 
power ;  occult  virtues  are  ascribed  to  amulets  and  charms  ; 
all  the  extravagances  of  sorcery,  magic,  and  witchcraft  are 
devoutly  believed ;  and  in  an  unscientific  age,  that  is  to 
say,  in  an  age  of  ignorance,  the  study  of  the  Bible  alone 
does  not  dispel  those  idle  imaginations  nor  redeem  men 

2A 


354  MEMOIRS   OF 

from  the  dominion  of  superstitious  fears.      As  Milman 
has  said, 

Christianity  may  exist  in  a  certain  form  in  a  nation  of  savages, 
as  well  as  in  a  nation  of  philosophers  ;  yet  its  specific  character 
will  almost  entirely  depend  upon  the  character  of  the  people 
who  are  its  votaries.  It  must  be  considered,  therefore,  in 
constant  connection  with  that  character ;  it  will  darken  with 
the  darkness  and  brighten  with  the  light  of  each  succeeding 
century  ;  in  an  uncongenial  time  it  will  recede  so  far  from  its 
essential  nature  as  scarcely  to  retain  any  sign  of  its  divine 
original ;  it  will  advance  with  the  advancement  of  human 
nature,  and  keep  up  the  moral  to  the  height  of  the  intellectual 
culture  of  man. 

Milman  here  ascribes  the  emancipation  of  mankind  from 
the  slavery  of  superstition  to  the  progress  of  intellectual 
enlightenment  in  general;  but  history  gives  abundant  evi- 
dence that  mere  learning  does  not  accomplish  that  result. 

The  age  which,  in  England,  produced  a  Milton,  a  Bacon,  a 
Dryden,  and  a  Pope,  was  certainly  not  an  age  deficient  in 
literary  culture  of  the  highest  order.  Yet  the  legislation  of 
that  age  and  its  judicial  history  are  deeply  tinged  with  the 
errors  I  have  signalized ;  and  it  surely  cannot  be  said  of  these 
that  they  received  their  character  from  the  men  the  least  en- 
lightened of  their  time.  In  this  country  the  extravagances 
of  the  Salem  persecution  were  encouraged,  if  not  originally 
instigated,  by  the  educated  clergy,  including  among  their 
number  the  president  of  the  only  seminary  of  higher  learning 
then  existing  on  the  continent.  The  fault  of  the  education  of 
that  time  was  its  neglect  of  the  study  of  the  phenomena  of 
nature.  Physical  science  had  indeed  made  some  progress,  but 
it  had  attained  to  no  diffusion  beyond  the  narrow  circle  of  its 
immediate  votaries.  Scientific  men  were  generally  learned, 
but  there  were  very  few  learned  men  who  were  scientific. 

It  is  to  science,  then,  in  the  sense  of  physical  science,  and 
not  to  the  learning  of  the  schools  of  philosophy,  that  we 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  355 

owe  our  deliverance  from  many  superstitions,  and  since 
superstition  is  essentially  hostile  to  true  religion,  the  ser- 
vice of  science  to  religion  has  already  been  enormous. 
But  that  is  not  all. 

I  need  not  argue  that  the  Christianity  which,  according  to 
Milman,  may  exist  among  a  nation  of  savages,  and  the  Christi- 
anity which  sheds  its  benign  influence  over  the  civilization  of 
our  own  continent  to-day,  cannot  be  both  of  them  equally  the 
Christianity  of  the  New  Testament.  The  spirit  and  the  power 
of  Christianity  manifest  themselves  in  doing  good,  in  pity 
toward  the  erring,  in  the  unremitting  endeavor  to  soften  for  all 
men  the  inevitable  miseries  of  this  lower  life.  But  the  spirit 
which  is  fanned  by  superstition  makes  of  religion  a  terror 
rather  than  a  blessing.  It  divests  Christianity  of  those  feat- 
ures of  mildness  and  benignity  by  which  it  is  adapted  to  the 
wants  of  our  weak  and  imperfect  nature,  and  converts  it  into 
a  source  of  perpetual  anxiety  and  apprehension.  Consider,  for 
example,  the  asceticism  which  came  in  with  the  corruption  of 
Christianity,  and  which  has  not  even  yet  entirely  disappeared, 
the  gloomy  isolation  to  which  it  led  numbers  to  subject  them- 
selves, and  the  extraordinary  forms  of  self-torture  to  which  it 
impelled  them  to  submit,  and  say  in  what  respect  these  things 
are  less  melancholy  subjects  of  contemplation  than  the  more 
recent  suttee  of  India,  the  exposure  of  infants  on  the  Ganges, 
or  the  self-immolation  of  frenzied  fanatics  beneath  the  wheels 
of  Juggernaut.  If  the  philosophic  study  of  nature  has  con- 
tributed in  any  degree,  as  I  believe  it  has  greatly,  to  disen- 
thrall the  human  imagination  from  that  slavery  to  error  in 
religious  beliefs  which  has  so  painfully  in  every  age  embit- 
tered human  life,  it  has  rendered  an  inappreciable  service  at 
the  same  time  to  the  cause  of  enlightened  Christianity. 

Dr.  Barnard  next  addressed  himself  briefly  but  power- 
fully to  the  actual  present  relations  of  physical  science  to 
revealed  religion.  It  may  be  asked  (he  said)  what  we 
have  to  say  of  such  startling  speculations  as  the  nebular 
hypothesis  in  astronomy,  the  teaching  of  geology  in  regard 


356  MEMOIRS  OF 

to  the  age  of  our  planet,  the  asserted  discoveries  relating 
to  the  antiquity  of  man,  the  doctrine  of  progressive  devel- 
opment and  other  similar  matters  in  which  science  is  in 
direct  conflict  with  impressions  which  are  generally  sup- 
posed to  be  legitimately  derived  from  Bible  history.  To 
these  questions  he  did  not  attempt  to  make  a  detailed 
reply ;  but  only  to  state  the  general  principles  on  which 
a  reply  might  be  made. 

First,  that  the  Bible  is  not  a  book  of  science,  and  that 
to  expect  it  to  contain  an  accurate  scientific  view  of  the 
universe  would  be  nothing  less  than  absurd.  The  argu- 
ment on  this  point  was  exceedingly  cogent. 

To  have  given  professedly  a  philosophic  exposition  of  the 
principles  of  natural  things  [said  Dr.  Barnard]  would  have  been 
inconsistent  with  the  objects  for  which  the  Bible  itself  was 
given.  Such  an  exposition  must  either  have  presented  truth 
as  it  will  be  when  (should  that  ever  happen)  the  process  of 
discovery  is  exhausted  —  truth,  therefore,  which  would  in 
many  points  conflict  with  our  present  convictions,  and  which 
must  always  have  been  in  conflict  with  the  convictions  of  the 
ages  which  have  gone  before  us ;  or  it  must  have  embodied  the 
imperfect,  and,  in  most  things,  erroneous  philosophy  of  its  own 
day,  and  so  have  been  brought  into  permanent  discredit  by  the 
earliest  steps  of  advancement.  On  either  supposition,  it  would 
have  been  out  of  harmony  with  the  actual  state  of  scientific 
opinion  at  any  given  period,  and  would  have  lost,  or  have 
failed  from  the  beginning  to  secure,  the  confidence  of  men  in 
its  divine  origin.  In  the  fact,  therefore,  that  the  science  of 
nature  is,  to  beings  of  limited  powers,  like  the  human  race,  a 
science  of  necessary  progress,  in  which  truths  which  seem  to 
be  most  assuredly  established  are  ever  liable  to  be  superseded 
by  profounder  truths,  we  find  a  satisfactory  reason  why  we 
might  expect  it  to  be  excluded  from  a  revelation  relating  only 
to  the  interests  of  man's  nature. 

In  the  second  place,  without  undertaking  to  deny  that  the 
conclusions  gathered  from  the  study  of  the  book  of  nature  may 
sometimes  seem  at  variance  with  impressions  derived  from  the 


FREDERICK   A.   P.   BARNARD  357 

pages  of  the  Bible,  it  must  be  remembered  that  these  impres- 
sions are  themselves  liable  to  be  determined  by  the  precon- 
ceived notions  of  the  reader,  and  that  they  are  not  of  necessity 
the  only  interpretations  which  the  language  will  bear.  On  the 
occurrence  of  any  such  apparent  disagreement,  the  proper  and 
reasonable  course  is  to  use  discovery  as  an  aid  to  interpreta- 
tion ;  and  not  to  insist,  as  is  so  often  and  so  unwisely  done, 
that  the  discordance  is  irreconcilable. 

In  the  third  place,  avoiding  the  use  of  the  word  "evolu- 
tion," Dr.  Barnard  endeavored  to  quiet  Christian  appre- 
hensions by  stating  that  the  evolutionary  theory  was  still 
a  mere  hypothesis.  This  part  of  his  argument  was  less 
satisfactory  than  the  rest,  for  the  mathematical  defini- 
tion of  parallel  straight  lines  implies  an  hypothesis  which 
can  never  be  verified  and  which  is  possibly  untrue ;  the 
existence  of  the  ether  is  likewise  a  mere  hypothesis  which, 
though  of  the  highest  probability,  has  never  yet  been 
verified  ;  and  indeed,  the  existence  of  matter,  which  no 
man  doubts,  is  nothing  more  than  an  unverifiable  hypothe- 
sis from  which  no  man  can  practically  escape.  Conse- 
quently, since  an  hypothesis  may  be  held  with  a  certitude 
hardly  less  than  that  of  knowledge,  it  could  not  have  been 
fully  satisfactory  to  Dr.  Barnard's  own  mind  to  reduce 
the  evolutionary  theory  to  the  rank  of  an  hypothesis  ; 
yet  it  was  doubtless  soothing  to  the  minds  of  some  of  his 
hearers  to  be  told  that  the  truth  of  the  doctrine  which  they 
dreaded  was  incapable  of  demonstration  ;  and  to  his  own 
mind,  as  well  as  others,  it  was  equally  satisfactory  to  know 
that  nothing  which  is  true  can  be  dangerous,  and  that 
the  evolutionary  theory  could  obtain  no  permanent  place 
in  science  unless  it  should  attain  to  the  certainty  of  truth. 
His  brief  remarks  on  this  great  subject  were  as  follows : 

Another  observation  may  here  be  fitly  made.  Of  the  more 
recent  theories  which,  in  their  discussion,  have  excited  among 


358  MEMOIRS   OP 

the  friends  of  religion  the  greatest  uneasiness,  it  can  hardly 
be  said  of  one  that  it  is  an  accepted  theory  of  science.  The 
speculators  who  show  the  least  respect  for  the  religious  con- 
victions of  men  are  often  quite  as  regardless  of  the  ordinary 
principles  of  common  sense.  Take,  for  example,  the  doctrine 
of  progressive  development.  It  is  only  the  ingenuity  dis- 
played by  its  advocates  which  has  secured  for  it  more  than 
a  momentary  attention.  The  strength  of  the  scientific  world 
has  always  been  enlisted  against  it.  Though  repeatedly  re- 
vived, it  has  been  just  as  often  trodden  out  of  life.  And  so 
it  must  be  with  all  mere  hypothesis.  Nothing  can  claim  a 
permanent  place  in  science  which  fails  to  attain  the  certainty 
of  truth.  And  nothing  which  is  true  can  be  dangerous. 

Dr.  Barnard  urged  that  two  things  were  needed  in 
order  that  the  scientific  and  the  religious  world  might 
be  led  to  lay  aside  their  mutual  distrust  and  work  har- 
moniously in  the  cause  of  truth,  which  is  the  cause  of 
both.  It  was  necessary  that  religious  men  should  study 
science  and  refrain  from  pronouncing  upon  its  tendencies 
until  they  understood  it.  If  they  did  so,  they  might 
discover  that  the  conclusions  of  science  are  not  irrecon- 
cilable with  the  language  of  the  Bible  when  rightly 
interpreted;  they  would  learn  the  danger  of  assuming 
that  demonstrable  truths  of  science  are  in  conflict  with 
the  Word  of  God;  and  they  would  learn  the  indispen- 
sable necessity  of  reading  Scripture  by  the  light  of 
science,  instead  of  attempting  to  control  the  conclusions 
of  science  by  an  exegesis  which  may  be  full  of  possi- 
bilities of  error.  Even  if  they  should  be  unconvinced, 
and  if  they  should  feel  themselves  obliged  still  to  oppose 
scientific  conclusions,  they  would  at  least  be  able  to  dis- 
cuss the  subject  with  intelligence,  and  they  would  be 
less  liable  to  fall  into  the  fatal  error  of  attempting,  with 
incredible  labor,  to  disprove  facts  rather  than  to  invali- 
date inferences.  In  Dr.  Barnard's  opinion,  there  was 


FKEDEKICK  A.   P.   BABNAKD  359 

no  more  urgent  need  of  the  time  than  that  pious  men 
and  earnest  Christians  should  be  also  cultivators  of  scien- 
tific study.  By  becoming  such,  they  might  purify  science 
from  the  reproach  of  irreligion  which  they  were  accus- 
tomed to  bring  against  it ;  and  if  there  was  a  semblance 
of  justice  in  that  reproach,  he  asked  to  what  it  could  be 
owing  but  to  the  fact  that  the  field  of  science  had  been 
voluntarily  abandoned  by  religious  men.  The  wonder, 
to  his  mind,  was  that  in  some  departments  of  science 
there  should  be  any  religion  left.  After  geology  had 
been  put  under  the  ban  of  modern  Christianity  almost 
as  resolutely  as  astronomy  in  the  Middle  Ages,  it  might 
be  supposed  that  a  devout  Christian  geologist  would  be 
impossible ;  and  yet  such  examples  as  those  of  Hugh 
Miller,  Adam  Sedgwick,  Edward  Hitchcock,  Benjamin 
Silliman,  and  many  others,  had  proved  that  a  firm  belief 
in  the  facts  of  geology  is  in  no  way  inconsistent  with 
fervent  piety  or  with  Christian  conviction. 

It  is  men  like  these  who  are  qualified  to  pronounce  upon 
the  tendencies  of  the  sciences  which  they  cultivate;  and  if 
they  find  in  them  nothing  to  disturb  their  Christian  faith, 
how  can  we  doubt  that  other  men  equally  pious,  whom  the 
course  of  science  seems  to  fill  with  continual  anxiety,  would 
attain  a  similar  tranquillity  if  they  would  consent  to  be  better 
informed.  In  short,  the  true  position,  the  strong  position,  the 
only  impregnable  position  against  the  assaults  of  sceptical 
physicists,  is  in  the  field  occupied  by  the  assailants  them- 
selves. 

On  the  other  hand,  Dr.  Barnard  observed  that  a  cer- 
tain spirit  was  prevalent  among  scientific  men  which 
ought  to  be  corrected. 

If  they  have  sometimes  been  held  up  to  undeserved  oppro- 
brium, they  have  repaid  the  injury  with  too  manifest  con- 
tempt j  and  if  their  best-established  conclusions  have  not  been 


360  MEMOIRS   OF 

respected,  they  have  possibly  maintained  too  positive  a  tone 
in  regard  to  those  whose  claims  to  respect  were  more  question- 
able. While  the  object  of  science  is  truth,  there  is  much  in 
the  scientific  teaching  of  any  given  period  of  which  the  proof 
is  only  a  high  degree  of  probability.  Every  such  portion  of 
doctrine  holds  its  place  only  provisionally,  and  is  liable  to  be 
displaced  or  subverted  by  a  truth  more  assured.  Now,  just 
in  proportion  to  the  obstinacy  with  which  the  highest  evidence 
is  resisted,  a  disposition  seems  to  manifest  itself  to  insist 
unwarrantably  on  positions  sustained  by  feebler  evidence, 
and  the  controversialist  who  assumes  to  speak  in  the  name 
of  science  displays  a  spirit  of  self-satisfied  superiority,  and 
indulges  a  tone  of  confident  assertion,  which  confirms  opposi- 
tion instead  of  conciliating  favor. 

The  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  was  this  : 

If,  then,  religious  men,  on  the  one  side,  should  acquaint 
themselves  better  with  science,  scientific  men  who  are  not  pro- 
fessedly religious,  on  the  other,  should  cultivate  a  more  modest 
tone  in  presenting  views  which  are  still  open  to  doubt.  Let 
neither  party  bring  against  the  other  railing  accusations ;  but 
let  each  use  toward  the  other  the  language  of  Christian 
charity,  and  act  in  the  spirit  of  Christian  forbearance.  Both 
are  in  the  pursuit,  of  the  same  avowed  object;  let  them 
harmoniously  pursue  it  together. 

Something  like  this  must  take  place,  and  must  take  place 
soon,  or  the  most  deplorable  consequences  are  in  store  for  the 
world.  The  progress  of  science  cannot  be  arrested.  It  has  an 
inherent  vitality  which  acquires  new  vigor  with  each  succeed- 
ing year.  It  is,  moreover,  day  by  day  and  hour  by  hour, 
securing  a  stronger  hold  upon  men's  consideration  and  regard, 
by  intertwining  itself  more  and  more  with  all  their  earthly 
interests.  Estranged  from  religion,  it .  may  exert  a  fatal 
power  in  dragging  men  after  it.  It  may  become  in  fact 
the  baleful  influence  which  it  is  now  only  suspected  of  being 
capable  of  becoming. 

Let  science  and  religion  be  harmonized,  let  their  devotees 
unite  lovingly  their  efforts  in  one  common  search  after  truth, 
and  nobler  triumphs  than  have  ever  yet  been  realized  may 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BAKNAKD  361 

crown  their  alliance.  Their  labors  will  be  fruitful,  for  God's 
blessing  will  be  upon  them.  Year  by  year,  in  constantly  in- 
creasing profusion,  the  hand  of  science  shall  scatter  benefits 
over  every  land.  But  infinitely  more  valuable  than  all  she 
has  ever  done  or  can  do  to  promote  the  comfort  of  mankind, 
will  be  the  lesson  she  will  bring,  "  Seek  ye  first  the  kingdom 
of  God  and  His  righteousness,  and  all  these  things  shall  be 
added  unto  you." 

The  effect  of  Dr.  Barnard's  Inaugural  Address  was 
immediate  and  emphatic.  Portions  of  it  were  widely 
copied  in  the  periodicals  of  the  time.  Men  of  science  felt 
that  in  him  they  had  a  champion  worthy  of  their  cause, 
and  the  leaders  of  religious  thought  were  reassured  by 
the  conviction  that  with  him  they  might  safely  take  "  the 
true  position,  the  strong  position,  the  only  impregnable 
position  against  the  assaults  of  sceptical  physicists,  in  the 
field  occupied  by  the  assailants  themselves." 


362  MEMOIRS  OF 


CHAPTER  XIV 

A  lack  of  incident  in  Dr.  Barnard's  later  life  —  Discouragements  of  the 
earlier  years  of  his  presidency  —  Discipline  —  The  responsibility  of 
students  —  Freedom  of  attendance  —  The  marking  system  —  Oral  and 
written  examinations  —  Grading  —  Honors  —  Decrease  in  attendance 
in  the  collegiate  department  —  Admissions  without  examination  — 
Visitation  of  affiliated  schools. 

THE  life  of  Dr.  Barnard,  after  his  election  to  the  Presi- 
dency of  Columbia  College,  was  devoid  of  incident.  Apart 
from  his  literary  labors,  which  will  be  mentioned  later  on, 
there  is  little  to  be  recorded  except  the  gradual  modifica- 
tion and  ultimate  change  of  some  of  his  views,  and  the 
development  of  his  plans  for  the  expansion  of  the  college 
into  a  university.  In  the  twenty-four  years  of  his  service, 
he  was  absent  from  his  post  for  only  a  single  year,  when 
he  was  appointed  by  the  President  of  the  United  States 
one  of  the  ten  government  commissioners  to  the  Exposition 
of  the  Industries  of  All  Nations  at  Paris,  which  was  opened 
to  the  public  on  April  1st,  1867.  He  sailed  from  New 
York  early  in  February,  with  the  intention  of  observing 
the  great  solar  eclipse  which  occurred  on  March  6  of  that 
year,  and  which  was  central  and  annular  in  the  south  of 
Italy.  Salerno  was  selected  as  the  point  of  observation, 
and  on  his  arrival  there,  he  found  a  party  of  astronomers 
who  had  been  sent  from  the  Paris  Observatory.  Unfortu- 
nately, their  purpose  was  thwarted,  for,  as  in  Labrador  in 
1860,  the  sky  was  completely  overcast  with  clouds  during 
the  whole  time  of  the  eclipse,  and  he  returned  to  Paris  by 
way  of  Naples,  Rome,  Pisa,  and  other  places  of  interest. 


FEEDEEICK  A.   P.   BAENAED  363 

Until  the  close  of  the  Exposition  in  the  month  of  Novem- 
ber, he  remained  at  Paris  in  discharge  of  his  official 
duties  ;  and  on  his  return  to  New  York  on  December  9, 
after  an  absence  of  ten  months,  he  was  occupied  during 
the  winter  in  the  preparation  of  a  report  on  the  Machinery 
and  Processes  of  the  Industrial  Arts  and  of  the  Apparatus 
of  the  Exact  Sciences  exhibited  in  the  Exposition.  This 
report  forms  the  third  volume  of  the  series  of  Official 
Reports  of  the  Commission. 

Again,  in  the  summer  of  1869,  and  afterwards  in  1873, 
1878,  and  1881,  Dr.  Barnard  travelled  in  Europe,  visiting 
England,  Scotland,  Germany,  Austria,  the  Tyrol,  north- 
eastern Italy,  Switzerland,  Holland,  and  Belgium.  Dur- 
ing the  International  Exposition  at  Vienna  in  1873,  he 
was  one  of  the  few  foreigners  who  were  invited  to  be 
present  at  the  grand  reception  given  at  Schoenbrunn  by 
the  Emperor  of  Austria  to  the  Shah  of  Persia.  In  1876, 
he  was  appointed  Assistant  Commissioner-General  from 
the  United  States  to  the  International  Exposition  of  that 
year  in  Paris,  and  after  the  Exposition  he  received  from 
the  French  Government  the  decoration  of  an  Officer  of 
the  Legion  of  Honor. 

In  the  foregoing  paragraphs  there  is  contained  a  suffi- 
cient summary  of  the  principal  events  in  Dr.  Barnard's 
external  life.  His  true  life,  the  life  which  is  of  perma- 
nent interest,  was  his  life  as  an  educator  and  as  a  man  of 
letters.  His  course  was  not  always  smooth.  His  views 
were  not  immediately  accepted  by  the  Faculty,  and  the 
measures  which  he  most  earnestly  advocated  were  adopted 
far  more  slowly  than  he  desired  and  expected.  In  grap- 
pling with  difficulties  and  in  removing  obstructions,  it 
may  be  supposed  that  he  did  not  always  remember  how 
recently  and  how  strenuously  he  had  opposed  the  very 
reforms  which  he  had  now  come  to  consider  necessary ; 


364  MEMOIRS   OF 

and  it  may  also  be  imagined  that  a  certain  intolerance  of 
opposition  and  a  certain  imperiousness  of  manner  may 
have  failed  to  secure  for  his  plans  an  acceptance  which 
might  perhaps  have  been  sooner  and  more  easily  gained. 
Another  cause  of  discouragement  presented  itself  in  the 
steady  decline  of  the  number  of  students  which  began  in 
the  first  year  of  his  presidency,  and  which  continued  for 
seven  successive  years.  In  1865  there  were  150  under- 
graduates ;  in  1872  there  were  only  116,  — 19  less  than 
in  1810,  —  and  it  was  not  until  1875  that  the  College  re- 
covered its  lost  ground.  It  was  during  these  years,  as 
it  will  presently  appear,  that  Dr.  Barnard  changed,  and 
in  one  important  particular  seemed  to  have  completely 
reversed,  his  former  views  of  the  proper  scope  and  arrange- 
ment of  the  curriculum  of  a  college  education. 

In  Dr.  Barnard's  report  to  the  Board  of  Trustees  for 
1865,  he  referred  only  to  the  collegiate  department  which 
was  under  his  immediate  charge.  In  1866,  he  made  a 
brief  report  of  the  School  of  Mines  which  had  then  just 
been  established;  in  1867,  Professor  Drisler,  the  acting 
President  during  Dr.  Barnard's  absence  in  Europe,  con- 
fined his  report  to  the  College  proper ;  in  1868,  Dr.  Bar- 
nard devoted  a  large  part  of  his  report  to  the  School  of 
Mines,  and  added  the  statistics  of  the  School  of  Medicine 
and  the  School  of  Law;  and  from  that  year  his  annual 
reports  invariably  included  "  the  College  and  its  Associ- 
ated Schools,"  including  the  School  of  Medicine,  the 
graduates  of  which  received  their  degrees  from  Columbia, 
although  the  school  itself  was  under  separate  management. 

Naturally,  his  first  care  was  the  discipline  of  the  Col- 
lege. He  found  the  undergraduates  to  be  much  more 
boyish  in  demeanor  than  in  other  colleges.  For  the  most 
part,  they  were  merely  boys  who  had  been  pursuing  their 
education  at  local  schools  and  academies,  and  who  con- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  365 

tinued  to  live  at  home  on  entering  Columbia.  There  was 
little  of  what  is  known  in  other  institutions  as  "college 
life."  The  Freshmen,  and  even  the  Sophomores,  still  con- 
tinued to  be  school-boys  in  feeling  and  demeanor.  Dr. 
Barnard  felt  that  there  ought  to  be  greater  seriousness 
of  character  and  dignity  of  behavior,  and  he  considered 
that  these  characteristics  would  best  be  cultivated  by 
releasing  the  students  from  the  restraints  of  boyhood. 
He  therefore  urged  that  all  rules  should  be  abolished, 
except  the  single  broad  rule  that  every  student  should  be 
expected  and  required  to  behave  like  a  gentleman.  He 
insisted  that  the  charge  of  the  students  which  had  been 
contemplated  in  English  colleges  and  which  had  been 
attempted  in  American  colleges,  could  not  rightly  be  re- 
quired in  an  institution  like  Columbia,  the  students  of 
which  were  not  living  under  the  direct  observation  of  the 
Faculty.  All  the  arguments  which  he  had  formerly  set 
forth  on  this  subject  in  the  University  of  Alabama  were 
applied  with  greater  cogency  to  Columbia.  They  did 
not  at  first  commend  themselves  to  general  acceptance, 
but  they  gradually  prevailed,  and  their  good  effect  was 
speedily  apparent.  In  1872,  President  Barnard  reported 
that  the  minutes  of  the  Faculty  recorded  "scarcely  a  trace 
of  censure  upon  any  student,"  and  he  added  that  this 
gratifying  effect  was  due  "not  to  the  failure  to  detect 
offenders,  but  to  the  absence  of  offences  to  be  detected." 
In  1879,  he  had  the  satisfaction  to  report  as  follows : 

It  has  been  the  unceasing  effort  of  the  undersigned,  ever 
since  his  connection  with  the  College  began,  to  impress  the 
students  with  a  feeling  that  it  is  unworthy  of  young  men  of 
good  breeding  to  require  the  pressure  of  a  superior  authority 
in  order  to  compel  them  to  observe  the  ordinary  rules  of  pro- 
priety. .  .  .  The  rules  of  order  prescribed  for  the  regulation 
of  individual  conduct  have  been  few  and  small,  and  such  as 


366  MEMOIRS   OP 

recommend  themselves  as  being  obviously  indispensable.  .  .  . 
In  all  things  innocent  or  indifferent,  the  largest  freedom  has 
been  allowed.  The  instructors,  by  an  unreserved  cordiality 
of  intercourse  with  the  members  of  their  classes,  have  endeav- 
ored to  efface  the  feeling  of  constraint  which  is  so  often  the 
result  of  a  consciousness  of  authority  on  the  one  side,  and  of 
subordination  on  the  other.  The  students  also  have  been 
encouraged  to  communicate  freely  with  the  members  of  the 
governing  body  in  regard  to  all  matters  concerning  their  con- 
venience or  affecting  their  contentment  with  college  life,  and 
have  been  assured  that  if  they  have  any  grievances,  it  will 
only  be  necessary  to  make  them  known  in  order  to  secure  re- 
lief, so  far  as  it  is  practicable  to  give  it,  and  that  if  they  require 
any  gratification  which  can  be  consistently  granted,  they  have 
only  to  ask  in  a  proper  spirit  in  order  to  secure  it.  This  policy, 
if  it  has  not  been  the  exclusive  cause  of  the  high  morale  at 
present  prevailing  in  the  College,  has  at  least  done  much  to 
foster  and  sustain  it;  and  the  result  is  that,  for  a  number  of 
years  past,  and  never  more  remarkably  than  in  the  present 
year,  there  has  been  in  Columbia  College  a  complete  absence 
of  the  chronic  anxiety  for  the  permanence  of  good  order  which 
is  felt  in  so  many  smaller  institutions  where  quiet  is  often 
only  a  condition  of  unstable  equilibrium. 

At  a  later  period,  Dr.  Barnard  made  an  advance  even 
upon  this  high  plane  by  advocating  an  admission  of  the 
students  themselves  to  participation  in  the  government  of 
the  College.  The  whole  difficulty  of  college  government 
would  disappear,  he  said, 

if  the  students  themselves  were  made  responsible  for  the  pres- 
ervation of  good  order.  The  academic  community  would  then 
assume  the  character  of  a  voluntary  association  for  mutual 
improvement  or  for  social  enjoyment,  of  which  many  examples 
exist  in  every  college,  illustrating  the  entire  practicability  of 
the  principle.  Or  a  college  under  such  a  regime  may  be  com- 
pared to  a  city  club,  governed  by  rules  in  the  framing  of  which 
the  entire  membership  has  a  voice.  The  possible  success  of 
such  a  scheme  is  not  merely  a  matter  of  opinion.  It  has  been 


FREDERICK  A.  P.   BARNARD  367 

actually  put  into  practice  in  at  least  two  colleges  in  the  United 
States.  When  the  subject  was  first  referred  to  by  the  under- 
signed, in  his  annual  report  for  1881,  it  was  mentioned  that 
the  plan  of  self-government  by  the  students  had  been  in  unin- 
terrupted operation  for  a  period  of  ten  years  in  the  State 
University  of  Illinois  at  Urbana,  and  that  the  success  of  the 
experiment  had  been  all  that  was  anticipated.  More  recently 
Amherst  College  has  adopted  the  same  plan,  and  a  communica- 
tion received  within  the  last  month  from  the  President  of  that 
institution  expresses  his  entire  satisfaction  with  it. 

These  examples  will  probably  have  imitators;  and  though 
there  is  nothing  in  the  condition  of  our  own  College  to  induce 
us  to  interest  ourselves  particularly  in  the  question,  it  is  im- 
possible that  on  general  principles  we  should  not  be  disposed 
to  favor  this  form  of  government  here  as  well  as  elsewhere. 

So  far  did  Dr.  Barnard  go  in  his  desire  to  recognize 
the  personal  responsibility  of  students,  that  he  began  at 
a  very  early  time  to  advocate  the  dropping  of  all  rules 
concerning  their  attendance  on  college  exercises.  He 
held  that  attendance  on  the  classes  should  be  regarded 
as  a  privilege  by  which  the  student  was  to  profit,  and  not 
as  a  necessity  to  which  he  was  to  be  compelled  to  submit. 
If  he  failed  to  attend  regularly,  his  punishment  would 
be  his  subsequent  failure  to  pass  his  examinations ;  the 
reward  of  punctuality  would  be  an  assurance  of  success. 
This  proposal  was  adopted  with  a  reasonable  modification, 
namely,  that  if  a  student  should  absent  himself  without 
sufficient  cause  from  more  than  one-fourth  of  the  total 
number  of  exercises  in  any  department,  he  should  be 
debarred  from  the  privilege  of  examination  in  that  de- 
partment ;  and  as  the  statutes  required  satisfactory  exam- 
inations in  all  departments,  this  provision  operated  as  an 
exclusion  of  the  negligent  student  from  his  degree.  The 
operation  of  the  rule  showed  that  the  larger  number  of 
students  continued  to  attend  no  less  regularly  than  before, 


368  MEMOIRS   OF 

while  irregularity  of  attendance  on  the  part  of  a  small 
minority  was  sensibly  increased ;  and  in  view  of  this  as- 
certained result,  Dr.  Barnard  expressed  his  readiness  to 
amend  the  rule,  so  as  to  exclude  a  student  from  examina- 
tion who  should  be  absent  without  cause  from  one-sixth 
of  the  exercises  of  his  classes.  The  change  suggested 
does  not  appear  to  have  been  adopted,  and  in  1873,  the 
system,  after  a  trial  of  five  years,  was  found  to  have  been 
justified  by  experience.  In  his  report  to  the  Board  of 
Trustees,  Dr.  Barnard  said  : 

The  attendance  of  the  larger  portion  of  the  students  is  as  reg- 
ular as  it  ever  was  under  the  system  of  coercion.  None  are 
excessively  irregular  whom  the  system  of  penalties  would  be 
likely  to  restrain.  If,  under  the  present-  system,  any  become 
so  negligent  of  duty  as  to  make  their  further  progress  impos- 
sible, their  course  is  arrested  by  means  which  spare  them  the 
publicity  and  the  mortification  which  would  attend  on  the 
operation  of  penal  laws.  It  seems  probable  that  an  experi- 
ment which  has  been  attended  with  so  happy  results  in  this 
institution,  cannot  fail  sooner  or  later  to  make  its  way  else- 
where; and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that,  wherever  it  shall 
be  introduced,  the  difficulties  which  from  time  to  time  have 
been  experienced  in  the  government  of  colleges,  will  in  great 
measure  disappear. 

Dr.  Barnard  began  at  a  very  early  date  to  agitate  an 
abolition  of  the  "marking  system"  which  existed  in  the 
College.  He  pronounced  it  to  be  essentially  unsatisfac- 
tory. He  maintained  that  it  was  injurious  to  good 
scholarship,  and  that  a  single  written  examination  at  the 
close  of  the  year  would  not  only  give  a  better  evidence  of 
the  attainments  of  the  student,  but  would  constrain  him  to 
keep  the  whole  studies  of  his  classes  continually  in  mind 
and  memory  throughout  the  year.  After  a  time,  he 
recommended  the  adoption  of  the  distinction,  well  known 
in  English  universities,  between  pass  examinations  for  a 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  369 

simple  degree,  and  class  examinations  for  honors,  so  that 
students  applying  for  a  simple  pass  should  be  reported 
only  as  "proficient"  or  "deficient."  Still  later,  he  fa- 
vored the  plan  of  the  allowing  the  students  in  each  class 
to  vote  upon  the  honor  standing  of  its  members.  The 
whole  subject  was  discussed  in  his  annual  report  for  1887, 
from  which  an  extract  is  accordingly  given  here,  with 
some  abbreviations  : 

The  marking  system  has  been  going  on  in  this  college  for 
years,  without  having  reached  any  definite  conclusion.  The 
phrase  itself,  without  definition,  would  seem  to  indicate  some 
universally  understood  method  of  estimating  according  to  a 
numerical  scale  the  relative  values  of  scholastic  performances. 
This,  however,  is  hardly  true.  There  are  marking  systems 
and  marking  systems.  In  fact,  the  use  of  some  sort  of 
marking  system  can  hardly  be  avoided  while  gradation  in 
merit  is  attempted  at  all,  even  though  it  should  be  simplified 
to  a  mere  arrangement  of  names  in  a  certain  order.  In  this 
case  the  "  mark  "  is  the  place  of  the  name  in  the  numerical  list. 
This  is,  in  principle,  the  marking  system  practised  at  West 
Point ;  but  so  far  as  the  knowledge  of  the  undersigned  extends, 
it  is  not  in  use  in  any  American  or  British  college.  The 
systems  in  actual  use  are  various.  It  may  be  worth  while  to 
indicate  their  distinctive  features. 

That  which  was  in  operation  in  Columbia  College  when  the 
connection  of  the  undersigned  with  the  institution  began, 
consisted  in  a  daily  marking  of  every  exercise  at  a  valuation 
proportioned  to  a  given  maximum  according  to  the  judgment 
of  the  instructor.  The  summation  of  all  these  valuations  for 
an  entire  session  gave  what  was  called  a  term-mark.  To  this 
was  added  another  value  derived  from  the  closing  examination, 
having  an  effect  on  the  final  standing  equal  to  that  of  the  term- 
mark,  and  the  sum  of  the  two  constituted  the  credit  side  of 
the  account.  But  there  was  also  a  counter-system  of  demerit 
marks  for  misdemeanors  or  peccadilloes,  the  sum  of  which 
was  required  to  be  deducted  from  the  credit ;  and  the  balance 
remaining  determined  the  position  of  the  individual  in  the 
2s 


370  MEMOIKS   OF 

order  of  merit  in  his  class.  The  working  of  this  system  was 
attended  with  inconvenience.  It  assumed  that  every  student 
should  actually  perform  and  receive  a  mark  for  every  exercise 
prescribed  to  his  class ;  otherwise  the  aggregate  results  could 
afford  no  fair  basis  for  comparison.  But  in  classes  or  sections 
of  from  thirty  to  fifty  individuals  it  is  impossible  to  give  each 
person  an  opportunity  to  be  heard  in  the  brief  space  of  a  single 
hour  —  the  time  usually  devoted  to  a  college  exercise.  Hence  it 
will  happen  that  a  student  may  fail  to  be  "  called  up  "  oftener 
than  once  out  of  three  or  four  times.  His  record  will  therefore 
present  a  series  of  blanks,  and  the  number  of  his  actual  per- 
formances will  rarely  be  the  same  as  that  of  others  of  his 
class.  As  the  simplest  way  of  correcting  the  consequent 
inequalities,  the  practice  used  to  be  to  fill  the  blanks  by  allow- 
ing to  each  a  mark  deduced  from  the  sum  of  those  actually 
given,  divided  by  their  number,  which  was  called  "  giving  a 
man  his  average."  But  this  did  not  meet  the  whole  difficulty. 
The  average  was  given  only  for  blanks  occurring  when  the 
student  was  actually  present  and  (ostensibly  at  least)  prepared 
to  perform.  Other  blanks,  however,  would  from  time  to  time 
occur,  in  consequence  of  absences,  excusable  or  inexcusable. 
If  the  absences  were  excusable  by  illness  or  other  cause  beyond 
control,  the  blanks  might  be  filled  by  "  making  up "  the  exer- 
cise (as  it  was  called)  to  the  instructor  out  of  class  hours. 
This  imposed  a  tax  upon  the  teacher's  time,  which  was 
occasionally  very  heavy.  But  if  the  absences  were  not  ex- 
cusable, each  blank  counted  for  a  zero. 

The  faults  in  this  system  are  obvious.  It  was  a  capital 
fault  that  it  mixed  up  marks  for  scholarship  with  marks  for 
conduct ;  so  that  the  results  furnished  no  criterion  of  character, 
either  intellectual  or  moral.  On  this  account  alone,  the  under- 
signed did  not  hesitate  to  condemn  it  at  once,  and  this  feature 
of  it  was  immediately  abolished.  The  system,  so  modified, 
continued  to  be  maintained  for  several  years ;  but  it  worked 
very  heavily,  and  became  after  a  time  so  unsatisfactory  to  both 
officers  and  students  that  it  was  finally,  in  March,  1869,  aban- 
doned altogether. 

As  a  substitute  it  was  resolved  that,  from  that  time  forward, 
standing  in  scholarship  should  be  made  dependent  exclusively 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  371 

on  the  results  of  periodical  examinations,  to  be  held  semi- 
annually.  It  was  further  ordered  that  these  examinations 
should  be  conducted,  wherever  possible,  in  writing.  Also, 
that  in  the  examination  papers  periodically  prepared,  a  valua- 
tion should  be  attached  to  each  question  or  requisition  set 
forth  for  solution;  imperfect  performances  receiving  lower 
valuations  according  to  the  estimate  of  their  merit  by  the 
examiner.  This  was  a  marking  system  of  a  simpler  kind,  and 
the  only  system  used  in  the  British  universities;  with  this 
difference,  that  while  those  institutions  mark  once  for  all,  at 
the  conclusion  of  the  course,  the  marks  here  were  given  semi- 
annually,  and  the  aggregate  of  all  the  semi-annual  markings 
were  taken  at  the  close. 

A  little  later  this  system  received  a  still  further  simplifica- 
tion. Marks  for  particular  performances  ceased  to  be  given; 
but  every  instructor  was  required  to  make  a  monthly  report, 
arranging  his  students  in  each  of  his  classes  in  five  groups, 
distinguished  by  numbers.  Group  I.  embraced  the  students 
manifesting  the  highest  degree  of  excellence ;  the  other  groups 
consisted  of  grades  successively  inferior,  Grade  V.  being  in- 
tended for  the  unsatisfactory  or  deficient.  Here  personal 
distinction  between  the  members  of  the  same  group  were 
ignored;  and  at  the  close  of  the  year,  or  of  the  course,  the 
numbers  opposite  the  several  names  were  summed  up.  The 
smallest  sum  indicated  the  highest  standing;  the  largest  sum, 
the  lowest.  Names  having  equal  sums  against  them  were 
bracketed  together  as  of  equal  rank  in  the  order  of  merit. 

The  officers  in  their  monthly  reports  were  to  be  guided  in 
their  groupings  by  the  judgment  they  had  been  able  to  form 
of  the  comparative  ability  or  proficiency  of  the  students,  aided 
by  any  memoranda  they  might  be  disposed  to  keep  of  actual 
performances  to  assist  their  recollections;  but  they  were  to 
report  no  valuations  of  particular  performances.  To  the  under- 
signed this  method  of  grading  seemed  to  be  less  open  to  ob- 
jection than  any  other  which  he  had  ever  seen  in  operation ; 
yet,  for  some  reason  never  distinctly  avowed,  but  supposed  to 
be  the  omission  to  distinguish  differences  of  merit  between  the 
individual  members  of  the  several  groups,  it  began,  after  a 
limited  period  of  experiment,  to  breed  discontent;  and  in 


372  MEMOIRS   OF 

October,  1870,  there  was  introduced  a  final  modification  of  the 
system,  giving  it  the  form  which  it  has  since  maintained,  and 
which  seems  to  be  as  little  satisfactory  as  any  which  has  gone 
before.  According  to  the  present  plan,  the  monthly  reports  of 
the  instructors  continue  as  under  that  which  was  abolished,  but 
their  form  is  changed,  the  classification  by  groups  being  re- 
placed by  a  general  list  of  names  in  the  order  of  merit ;  and 
the  basis  on  which  the  arrangement  is  made  being  no  longer 
the  general  judgment  of  the  instructors,  but  the  valuation 
given  to  the  actual  performances  of  the  student  in  an  examina- 
tion held  for  this  express  purpose'  every  month.  The  final 
order  of  merit  for  the  year  or  for  the  course  is  obtained  by 
combining  the  results  of  all  the  monthly  examinations  with 
those  of  the  more  general  semi-annual  examinations,  giving 
to  these  latter  a  weight  equal  to  that  of  all  the  preceding 
monthly  examinations  of  the  half-year.  Under  this  system, 
if  a  student  is  absent  from  any  monthly  or  semi-monthly 
examination  he  suffers  a  serious  loss,  which,  however,  in  case 
the  absence  is  excusable,  he  is  privileged  to  make  good  by  a 
special  examination  separately  held. 

The  method  here  described  works  certainly  with  much  less 
friction  than  the  daily  marking  system  formerly  in  use ;  but  it 
is  open  to  some  serious  objections.  The  first  of  these  is  that 
the  scheme  stimulates  the  ambition  to  secure  favorable  marks 
without  awakening  a  corresponding  desire  to  become  possessed 
of  the  knowledge  by  which  such  marks  may  be  fairly  won.  To 
produce  a  performance  which  may  meet  the  approval  of  the 
examiner  is  the  object  of  the  student's  highest  endeavor, 
without  regard  to  the  means  by  which  this  object  is  ac- 
complished. Hence  the  resort  to  dishonest  practices,  the  use 
of  which  has  recently  been  charged  to  be  general  in  other 
institutions  as  well  as  in  this;  and  which,  there  can  be  no 
doubt,  is  often  attempted,  whatever  may  be  the  extent  of  its 
success.  There  are  those  who  have  watched  the  operations  of 
this  system  for  many  years,  who  are  ready  to  declare  it  is  a 
failure  altogether ;  and  that  even  under  it  the  highest  academic 
honors  have  not  seldom  been  secured  by  fraud.  If  the  under- 
signed does  not  fully  partake  of  these  convictions,  he  has  at 
least  reason  to  believe  that  they  are  not  wholly  without 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  373 

foundation;  and  he  therefore  regards  the  objection  to  the  sys- 
tem well  taken,  that  it  does  not  accomplish  the  object  proposed. 

But  a  greatly  more  serious  objection  to  it  than  its  failure,  is 
its  demoralizing  effect.  Whether  the  fraudulent  practices  are 
successful  or  not,  they  exert  a  deadening  influence  upon  the 
moral  sense.  So  pernicious  an  influence  steadily  acting  upon  a 
susceptible  youth  at  the  period  when  character  is  forming  can 
hardly  fail  to  undermine  his  principles  and  destroy  his  sense 
of  obligation  in  all  the  relations  of  life.  It  destroys,  moreover, 
his  sense  of  shame ;  for  while  in  its  own  nature  cheating  in  an 
examination-room  is  as  essentially  disgraceful,  and  is  always 
so  felt  to  be  by  an  unsophisticated  youth,  as  cheating  at  cards, 
yet  a  little  familiarity  with  the  practices  which  young  men 
tolerate  among  themselves  so  completely  dulls  their  sensibility 
on  the  subject  that  they  cease  even  to  affect  concealment  of 
their  dishonesty,  and  rather  plume  themselves  publicly  among 
their  fellows  on  their  success. 

The  evils  here  spoken  of  owe  their  existence  to  the  fact  that 
examinations  are  in  writing.  Oral  examinations  afford  small 
opportunities  for  imposing  upon  the  examiner  a  show  of 
knowledge  where  the  reality  does  not  exist.  Even  though  the 
letter  of  a  text  may  be  correctly  repeated,  a  few  well-directed 
questions  will  quickly  discover  how  far  intelligence  enters  into 
the  performance.  If  it  be  inquired,  then,  why  examinations 
should  not  be  made  entirely  oral,  the  reply  must  be  that  they 
were  so  half  a  century  ago,  and  that  the  method  was  abandoned 
for  what  were  then  esteemed  to  be  reasons  of  weight.  Among 
these  were  the  large  amount  of  time  necessary  to  make  an  oral 
examination  thorough  when  each  individual  of  a  class  has  to  be 
separately  taken  up.  The  method  is  quite  feasible  for  a  single 
person  or  for  a  squad  of  two  or  three ;  but  with  classes  number- 
ing from  fifty  to  an  hundred  or  upwards,  it  becomes  intolerably 
laborious.  Another  reason  is  that,  in  oral  examinations,  where 
all  the  students  are  examined  in  each  other's  presence,  the 
tests  cannot  be  identical  to  all ;  and  this,  considering  that  the 
object  of  the  examination  is  professedly  to  settle  the  question 
of  comparative  merit,  is  a  fatal  objection.  It  may  indeed 
happen,  and  it  is  in  fact  an  occurrence  which  often  did 
happe^  that  the  least  proficient  man  in  a  class,  through  the 


874  MEMOIRS  OF 

lucky  chance  which,  caused  the  most  elementary  matters  to  fall 
to  his  share,  was  enabled  to  appear  to  better  advantage  than  the 
most  thoroughgoing  of  his  competitors. 

Neither  the  oral  nor  the  written  examination  seems,  there- 
fore, to  be  well  adapted  to  secure  the  arrangement  of  the 
members  of  a  class  in  a  just  order  of  merit.  The  question 
may  then  be  very  properly  asked,  whether  this  object  is  im- 
portant enough  to  justify  the  trouble  it  costs.  The  educational 
effect  upon  young  minds  of  a  course  of  study  would  be  much 
more  beneficial,  if  the  incitement  to  effort  could  be  the  love  of 
knowledge  for  its  own  sake  rather  than  the  ambition  to  be 
publicly  proclaimed  as  outranking  their  fellows.  Why  should 
there  be  any  publication  made  as  to  scholastic  merit  except  the 
distinction  of  the  proficient  and  the  deficient  ?  This  distinction 
is  the  only  one  made  in  professional  schools,  and  it  is  the  only 
one  needed.  In  schools  of  the  liberal  arts,  the  order-of-merit 
plan  seems  to  have  been  adopted  in  the  belief  that  the  spirit  of 
emulation  induced  by  it  might  stimulate  diligence  in  study. 
Perhaps  it  does  to  a  certain  extent,  and  among  the  ambitious 
and  the  limited  number  to  whom  high  distinction  is  a  possi- 
bility; but  it  is  doubtful  whether,  among  the  great  majority, 
this  stimulus  is  felt  at  all,  and  it  is  not  at  all  doubtful  that, 
among  a  large  proportion,  the  influence  of  the  system  is  dis- 
couraging rather  than  animating. 

Should  it  be  deemed  advisable,  however,  to  continue  to  main- 
tain the  traditional  practice  of  grading  classes  in  a  regular  order 
of  merit,  it  would  seem  to  the  undersigned  most  judicious  to 
entrust  this  arrangement  either  to  the  judgment  of  the  officers 
having  charge  of  the  instruction  of  each  class,  to  be  made 
according  to  the  impression  produced  upon  their  minds  by  the 
performances  of  individuals  throughout  the  whole  course  of 
study,  and  not  upon  the  basis  of  any  system  of  numerical 
record ;  or,  better  than  this,  to  leave  this  determination  to  the 
free  suffrages  of  all  the  members  of  the  class  concerned ;  each 
student  to  form  for  himself  independently  an  order  of  merit 
embracing  the  names  of  all  his  classmates,  and  a  result  or 
authoritative  list  to  be  deduced  from  the  combination  of  these 
in  the  ordinary  way  of  counting  the  ballots  in  an  election. 
During  all  the  earlier  part  of  this  century,  and  down  to  some 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  375 

time  later  than  1830,  no  other  method  of  determining  academic 
rank  was  practised  in  Yale  College  than  this.  The  ballot  was 
resorted  to  only  twice  during  the  four-years  course :  once  just 
previous  to  the  Junior  exhibition,  and  again  in  anticipation  of 
the  final  graduation  ;  but  it  might  be  employed  more  frequently 
if  thought  advisable.  In  the  mean  time,  no  record  was  kept  of 
the  relative  standing  of  different  individuals,  and  men  were 
esteemed  according  to  the  reputation  they  established  among 
their  classmates,  who  were  the  observers  of  their  diligence  and 
of  the  character  of  their  scholastic  performances.  This  system 
was  abandoned  at  New  Haven,  not  because  of  any  distrust  of 
its  fundamental  principles,  but  for  the  belief  that  the  plan  of 
giving  a  daily  mark  for  every  exercise  would  have  the  effect  to 
keep  the  student  more  closely  up  to  his  work ;  and  hence  the 
marking  system  was  adopted.  The  two  could  not  work  to- 
gether, and  consequently  the  practice  of  voting  was  discon- 
tinued. 

Two  obvious  advantages  recommend  the  plan  here  proposed. 
It  leads  young  men  to  prize  the  good  opinion  of  their  fellows, 
and  to  seek  to  be  esteemed  for  real  and  not  for  fictitious 
scholarship,  represented  by  marks  obtained  often  by  methods 
of  equivocal  character ;  and  it  trains  young  men  in  their  early 
years  to  the  use  of  those  methods  for  securing  success,  on 
which  they  will  be  compelled  to  depend  throughout  all  their 
future  life. 

Two  objections  have  been  made  to  the  plan.  First,  it  is  said 
that  young  men  will  be  biassed,  in  giving  their  voices,  by  feel- 
ings of  personal  friendship  or  aversion ;  so  that  the  vote  will 
not  be  expressive  of  an  honest  judgment.  Secondly,  there  are, 
at  this  time,  so  many  distracting  interests  among  college  stu- 
dents, the  offspring  of  their  numerous  petty  associations,  that 
class  feeling  is  to  a  large  extent  subordinated  to  ambitions  of  a 
less  comprehensive  character;  in  consequence  of  which  the 
vote  will  be  partisan,  and  not  an  expression  of  conscientious 
conviction.  Both  these  objections  are  hypothetical.  Long- 
continued  experiment  has  proved  that  the  first  is  baseless. 
The  disturbing  cause  assumed  in  the  second  to  be  so  dangerous 
did  not  exist,  or  did  not  exist  to  the  same  degree,  early  in  the 
century ;  and  what  might  be  its  influence  can  only  be  matter 


376  MEMOIRS   OF 

of  opinion.  A  new  experiment  might  very  probably  prove  it 
to  be  quite  inefficacious  for  harm.  Such  an  experiment  is  cer- 
tainly worth  trying. 

It  has  been  already  remarked,  that  from  1865  to  1872 
there  was  a  gradual  but  steady  decrease  of  the  number  of 
students  in  attendance  on  the  collegiate  department;  but 
after  1872  there  was  a  much  more  rapid  increase,  so  that 
in  1878  the  number  of  undergraduates  was  just  one  more 
than  twice  as  many  as  in  1872.  The  number  of  appli- 
cants for  admission  in  1877  exceeded  one  hundred,  of 
whom  seventy -five  were  admitted  to  the  Freshman  class. 
The  labor  of  examining  these  candidates  was  very  great, 
and  the  prospect  was  that  it  would  become  greater  from 
year  to  year.  It  was  not  at  all  certain  that  the  examina- 
tions were  a  satisfactory  test  of  the  fitness  of  the  candi- 
dates to  enter  upon  a  course  of  collegiate  study.  In  some 
cases,  the  nervous  anxiety  of  the  student  made  it  impos- 
sible for  him  to  do  himself  justice;  in  other  cases,  a  lucky 
chance  might  put  before  an  indolent  or  ill-prepared  candi- 
date questions  which  he  happened  to  be  able  to  answer,  but 
which  did  not  test  his  ability  to  proceed  with  studies 
which  lay  before  him;  in  many  cases,  students  of  real 
ability  might  be  rejected  on  account  of  deficiencies  which 
they  might  easily  make  up  by  earnestness  and  industry ; 
and  in  cases  still  more  numerous,  students  of  far  less 
merit  might  be  allowed  to  pass  simply  because  they  had 
been  thoroughly  coached  and  crammed  for  the  entrance 
examination.  In  1878,  therefore,  Dr.  Barnard  recom- 
mended that  candidates  for  admission  to  the  College 
should  be  admitted  to  a  probationary  trial  without  pre- 
liminary examination.  Such  a  trial,  he  urged,  would  be 
in  fact  "nothing  more  than  a  protracted  examination." 
Whatever  the  student's  previous  advantages  or  disadvan- 
tages might  have  been,  his  continuance  as  a  member  of 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  377 

the  Freshman  class  would  depend  largely  upon  his  own 
diligence  and  determination  to  succeed.  Dr.  Barnard 
fairly  stated  the  objection  that  the  abolition  of  entrance 
examinations  would  encourage  some  to  present  themselves 
who  would  not  dare  to  encounter  the  test  of  an  examina- 
tion, and  whose  presence  in  a  class  might  tend  to  depress 
the  general  standard  of  scholarship;  but  to  this  objection 
he  replied  that  the  real  effect  of  the  probationary  trial 
which  he  recommended  would  be  to  detect  and  exclude 
that  very  class  of  candidates,  and  to  do  it  far  more  surely 
than  a  single  examination  either  did  or  could. 

As  an  alternative  to  the  proposed  system  of  indiscrimi- 
nate admissions,  Dr.  Barnard  strongly  recommended  a  sys- 
tem of  school  visitations  under  which  committees  from  the 
Faculty  might  be  sent  to  schools  of  reputation  to  examine 
their  Senior  classes,  with  the  understanding  that  the 
alumni  of  such  schools  should  be  admitted  to  the  College 
without  further  examination.  The  occasional  visits  of 
members  of  the  Faculty  to  the  schools  of  New  York  City 
had  been  received  with  expressions  of  gratification  on  the 
part  of  scholars  as  well  as  teachers ;  and  Dr.  Barnard  ex- 
pressed the  hope  that  Columbia  College  might  in  this  way 
be  drawn  into  closer  relations  with  the  greater  schools  of 
the  city  and  the  State,  with  great  advantage  both  to  the 
schools  and  to  the  College. 

In  1881,  he  returned  to  the  subject,  urging  that  the 
high  schools  and  academies  where  boys  and  even  young 
men  were  now  studying  at  an  age  at  which  they  would 
formerly  have  been  in  college,  ought  in  a  large  measure 
to  furnish  that  systematic  intellectual  training  which  was 
once  expected  of  the  College.  The  practical  difficulty  with 
which  the  College  was  beset  was  that  students  who  entered 
the  Junior  classes  were  frequently  found  not  to  have  re- 
ceived the  necessary  preliminary  training,  and  that  they 


378  MEMOIRS  OF 

entered  college  after  they  had  passed  the  age  in  which  such 
training  can  be  successfully  given.  Thus  it  came  to  pass 
that  the  College  must  necessarily  fail  in  the  discipline  of 
the  mental  faculties,  without  which  training  the  student 
could  profit  but  little  from  the  special  studies  of  the  col- 
lege course.  Dr.  Barnard,  therefore,  urged  a  revival  of 
the  Grammar  School  which  had  once  existed  in  connection 
with  the  college;  but  as  an  alternative  plan  which,  in  his 
opinion,  would  be  even  more  effectual,  he  renewed  his 
recommendation  of  the  establishment  of  close  relations 
with  the  upper  schools  of  the  city  and  State,  and  the  insti- 
tution of  a  system  resembling  that  of  the  English  Univer- 
sity Examination  Board,  which  extends  its  examinations 
to  schools  in  every  part  of  the  kingdom.  If  this  plan 
were  adopted,  every  school  of  reputation  would  be  obliged 
in  its  own  interest  to  adopt  the  system,  and  the  effect 
both  upon  the  school  and  upon  the  College  would  be  un- 
questionably good.  The  relief  which  it  would  afford  to 
the  Faculty  in  the  examination  of  students  for  matricula- 
tion would  be  very  great,  as  the  alumni  of  schools  and 
academies  which  cooperated  in  the  system  would  be  ma- 
triculated without  examination;  and  others,  in  accordance 
with  his  former  recommendation,  might  be  admitted  on 
probation.  It  does  not  appear  that  Dr.  Barnard's  views 
of  this  subject  were  ever  changed,  and  it  may  be  hoped 
that  his  desire  for  a  closer  relation  between  colleges  and 
the  upper  schools  of  the  city  and  State  may  yet  be  realized. 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD  379 


CHAPTER  XV 

A  change  of  views  on  the  subject  of  elective  studies  —  Modern  languages 
—  Defects  of  the  American  college  system  —  Popular  dissatisfaction 
with  it  proved  by  statistics  —  Increase  of  interest  in  scientific  studies  — 
The  beginning  of  an  elective  system  advocated  —  The  elective  system 
again  pressed  —  The  old  theory  of  the  college  curriculum  exclusively 
for  mental  discipline  rejected  —  The  revival  of  the  "double  course" 
recommended  —  Success  of  the  elective  system  reported,  and  its  exten- 
sion suggested  —  The  elective  principle  advanced  as  the  key  which 
solves  all  difficulties  of  the  college  problem  —  The  elective  system 
adopted  for  the  Junior  and  Senior  years. 

THE  subject  on  which  Dr.  Barnard's  views  underwent 
the  greatest  change  was  that  of  the  studies  which  ought  to 
have  a  place  in  a  regular  college  course.  It  will  be  re- 
membered that  in  Alabama  he  had  insisted  upon  the  neces- 
sity and  advantages  of  a  rigid  course  of  the  old  fashion,  the 
exclusive  object  of  which  should  be  the  discipline  of  the 
mental  faculties,  as  distinguished  from  the  acquisition  of 
knowledge  for  the  sake  of  its  prospective  utility.  On 
this  subject  he  was  then  the  most  conservative  of  con- 
servatives, maintaining  that  the  concessions  which  had 
been  made  by  American  colleges  to  the  general  demand 
for  "useful"  knowledge  had  been  attended  only  with  a 
diminution  of  their  usefulness  in  mental  discipline,  with- 
out any  compensating  advantage  in  the  imparting  of 
knowledge  of  practical  utility.  He  did  not  deny  the  need 
of  professional  schools ;  but  he  insisted  that  when  they 
were  required,  they  ought  to  be  established  and  main- 
tained apart  from  the  college,  and  that  the  only  relation 
that  the  college  could  rightly  sustain  to  them  would  be  to 
supply  them  with  students  whose  previous  training  would 


380  MEMOIRS  OF 

enable  them  to  pursue  their  professional  studies  to  the 
best  advantage.  When  he  went  to  Mississippi,  he  greatly 
enlarged  his  conception  of  the  function  of  a  university  as 
a  school  of  all  learning,  both  theoretical  and  practical,  but 
there  is  no  evidence  that  his  views  of  the  college  proper 
as  a  school  simply  of  mental  discipline  were  at  all  relaxed  ; 
and  when  he  reached  Columbia,  his  first  thought  seems  to 
have  been  only  to  relieve  the  college  course  of  studies  which, 
in  his  opinion,  could  not  be  pursued  with  advantage,  and 
which  tended  to  thwart  its  true  and  only  right  purpose. 
In  his  first  report  to  the  Trustees,  he  approached  that  sub- 
ject somewhat  tentatively  by  expressing  the  opinion  that 
"  it  is  quite  doubtful  whether  modern  history,  in  the  proper 
sense  of  the  word,  ought  to  occupy  any  considerable  space 
in  the  teaching  of  our  colleges  " ;  and  by  hinting  that 
"  political  economy,  while  it  might  have  a  place  in  an 
institution  having  the  character  of  a  proper  university  in 
which  the  student  is  presumed  to  have  been  already 
educated,"  is  less  appropriate  in  the  curriculum  of  a 
simple  college.  In  consequence  of  these  suggestions,  the 
history  of  philosophy  and  the  philosophy  and  history  of 
the  mathematics  were  dropped  from  the  curriculum  of 
undergraduate  studies,  but  it  is  noteworthy  that  the 
time  which  was  thus  saved  was  at  once  devoted  to  phy- 
sical science. 

During  his  visit  to  Europe,  in  1867,  Dr.  Barnard  availed 
himself  of  every  opportunity  to  examine  the  plans  and 
arrangements  for  teaching  practical  science  in  the  mining 
schools  of  London  and  Paris.  In  the  course  of  these 
investigations,  he  became  deeply  impressed  with  the  defec- 
tiveness  of  the  Columbia  School  of  Mines  in  failing  to 
provide  proper  instruction  in  the  modern  languages  of 
continental  Europe,  without  which  many  of  the  greatest 
works  of  science  must  be  inaccessible  to  the  student.  It 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  381 

was  manifest,  however,  that  the  study  of  these  languages, 
if  it  were  to  be  of  any  real  service,  must  be  undertaken  before 
the  student's  entrance  at  the  School  of  Mines.  It  ought, 
therefore,  he  thought,  to  be  admitted  as  a  part  of  the 
regular  college  curriculum  ;  and  he  was  confirmed  in  his 
belief  when  he  learned  that  this  plan  had  just  been  adopted 
at  Harvard,  where  French  and  German  were  to  be  intro- 
duced into  the  regular  course,  French  being  required 
throughout  the  Freshman  and  the  first  half  of  the  Sopho- 
more year,  German  during  the  second  half  of  the  Sophomore 
year,  and  both  of  these  languages,  together  with  Spanish 
and  Italian,  being  admitted  as  elective  studies  throughout 
the  Junior  and  Senior  years.  At  Harvard,  after  the  Fresh- 
man year,  no  Latin  or  Greek  was  to  be  required,  but  the 
student  was  to  be  permitted  to  elect  these  studies,  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  modern  languages,  mathematics,  physics, 
or  chemistry.  At  this  date,  the  Harvard  scheme  com- 
mended itself  to  the  judgment  of  Dr.  Barnard.  He 
denied  that  it  was  "  an  unconditional  surrender  of  the 
claims  of  the  ancient  learning,  alike  as  to  its  intrinsic 
and  its  educational  importance,"  on  the  somewhat  illogical 
ground  that  the  surrender  had  really  been  made  long  ago. 

The  scheme  [he  said]  is  only  a  frank  confession  that  the 
American  college  system  has  been  attempting  for  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century  to  accomplish  what  it  cannot  perform. 
The  addition  of  one  subject  after  another  to  the  curriculum  of 
instruction  has  so  increased  the  task  proposed  as  to  render 
thorough  instruction  in  anything  all  but  impossible.  The 
effect  upon  scholarship  in  Latin  and  Greek  has  been  visibly 
in  a  high  degree  injurious.  If  it  has  not  prevented  the  forma- 
tion of  accomplished  scholars  in  particular  instances,  it  has  cer- 
tainly diminished  the  amount  of  general  attainment;  for  by 
the  encroachment  of  the  studies  more  recently  superadded,  the 
time  once  devoted  to  this  has  been  greatly  reduced,  until  the 
learning  which  was  once  the  pride  of  our  educational  system 


382  MEMOIRS  OF 

is  menaced  with  the  danger  of  being  completely  smothered. 
The  process  has  been  gradual  and  insidious.  When  chemistry, 
physics,  mineralogy,  geology,  and  other  natural  sciences  were 
first  introduced,  they  were  taught  by  lecture,  at  hours  not 
occupied  by  the  regular  studies  of  the  course,  and  without 
reducing  the  number  of  hours  devoted  to  those  subjects.  Sub- 
sequently, however,  the  new  subjects  demanded  and  obtained 
a  fuller  recognition,  secured  to  themselves  an  allotment  of 
a  certain  number  of  regular  hours,  and  a  lodgement  having 
been  thus  effected,  the  intruding  studies  have  gradually  gained 
ground.  The  consequence  is  that  the  quantity  of  Latin  and 
Greek  which  is  now  read  in  colleges  has  diminished  fully 
one-half ;  and  yet  it  is  notorious  that  the  time  given  to  chemis- 
try or  physical  science  is  insufficient  to  give  the  student  more 
than  the  most  superficial  knowledge  of  either  of  these  subjects. 

In  Dr.  Barnard's  opinion,  the  scheme  adopted  by  Har- 
vard University  was  nothing  more  than  was  required  by 
a  frank  recognition  of  the  fact  "  that  a  college  cannot  ex- 
pect to  teach  every  individual  student  everything  which 
it  is  prepared  to  teach  ;  and  that  in  offering  to  each  a 
choice  of  studies,  it  was  simply  making  it  possible  for  him 
to  make  himself  proficient  in  those  which  he  could  pursue 
with  profit."  It  would  still  be  open  to  any  and  every 
man  to  make  himself  a  classical  scholar,  without  having 
his  progress  checked  by  the  compulsory  study  of  half  a 
dozen  sciences  in  which  he  could  not  become  proficient 
if  he  would,  and  would  not  if  he  could.  In  the  move- 
ment of  Harvard,  the  oldest  college  institution  of  the 
country,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  say  that  there  was  an 
indication  of  the  course  which  all  colleges  would  be  com- 
pelled to  pursue  sooner  or  later;  and  he  urged  that,  so 
far  as  the  modern  languages  were  concerned,  it  should 
be  taken  into  immediate  consideration  at  Columbia. 

In  1870,  he  returned  to  the  subject.  He  expressed  his 
conviction  that  the  demand  for  educational  culture  of  a 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  383 

high  order  was  not  diminishing,  and  that  the  number  of 
young  men  who  were  seeking  it  was  not  less  in  propor- 
tion to  the  population  than  it  had  been.  Some  kind  of 
intellectual  eminence  was  as  much  desired  as  ever,  but 
the  preference  was  no  longer  exclusively  given  to  the 
polite  and  academic  learning  furnished  by  the  established 
college  course.  A  knowledge  of  modern  languages  had 
come  to  be  considered  necessary,  and  scientific  studies 
had  at  once  a  practical  utility  and,  to  many  students,  an 
inherent  attraction,  beyond  that  of  literary  and  classical 
culture.  This  was  a  fact  which  might  be  shown  by  sta- 
tistics ;  for  the  fact  was  that  the  number  of  college  stu- 
dents, relatively  to  the  total  number  of  the  population 
of  the  country,  was  steadily  decreasing.  Taking  New 
England  alone  as  an  example,  he  showed  that  in  1826 
the  number  of  college  students  was  1  in  1513;  in  1838, 
it  had  risen  to  1  in  1294  ;  in  1855,  it  had  fallen  to  1  in 
1689 ;  and  in  1869,  it  had  fallen  still  further  to  1  in  192T. 
In  fact,  the  total  number  of  college  students  in  the  New 
England  States  had  remained  stationary  for  a  period  of 
fourteen  years  from  1855  to  1869,  since  the  total  number 
of  students  in  the  former  year  was  1745,  and  in  the  latter 
it  was  only  1754,  while  the  population  had  increased  dur- 
ing the  same  period  by  more  than  fifty  per  cent. 

The  inference  which  Dr.  Barnard  drew  from  these  sta- 
tistics was,  that  from  1826  to  1838  collegiate  education 
had  been  gaining  in  favor,  and  that  the  number  of  liber- 
ally educated  men  in  proportion  to  the  population  had 
become  larger  and  larger  ;  but  that  from  1838  onward, 
the  tendency  had  been  decidedly  the  other  way.  It  was 
evident  that  some  cause  must  have  begun  about  1838 
to  affect  the  public  mind  and  to  produce  a  tendency  to 
diminish  the  relative  demand  for  college  education,  while 
it  increased  the  demand  for  educational  culture  of  a  dif- 


384  MEMOIRS   OF 

ferent  character.  That  cause,  he  said,  was  the  growing 
interest  in  physical  science  which  began  to  assert  itself 
somewhere  about  the  year  1830.  About  that  time 

the  numerous  splendid  triumphs  of  modern  science  began  to  a 
marked  degree  to  arrest  the  public  attention.  That  was  the 
era  of  the  .invention  of  the  oxyhydrogen  blowpipe,  of  the  con- 
struction of  the  electro-magnet,  of  the  creation  of  permanent 
galvanic  batteries,  of  the  invention  of  the  magnetic  telegraph, 
of  rapidly  multiplying  applications  of  chemistry  to  the  indus- 
trial arts,  and  of  the  introduction  of  steam  as  a  motive  power 
upon  the  ocean.  It  was  also  the  era  which  presented  directly 
under  the  eyes  of  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  the  land 
one  of  the  most  magnificent  of  the  creations  of  science  applied 
to  industry,  the  railroad,  with  its  necessary  concomitant,  the 
locomotive.  And  it  is  within  the  clear  recollection  of  every 
man  whose  own  personal  history  goes  back  to  that  period,  that 
that  was  the  era  in  which  first  arose  in  our  country  that  clamor 
against  the  value  of  classical  studies  of  which  we  have  since 
heard  so  much,  and  of  which  the  principal  burden  seems  to  be 
that  the  classics  produce  no  telegraphs,  create  no  engines,  lay 
down  no  railways,  and  turn  the  wheels  of  no  mills. 

Dr.  Barnard  did  not  recommend  that  collegiate  institu- 
tions should  surrender  to  the  "  clamor  "  against  classical 
studies. 

The  literature  of  Eome  and  Greece  cannot  be  put  aside  or 
made  to  be  forgotten  of  men ;  because  it  is  not  the  literature 
of  a  people  or  of  an  age,  but  it  is  the  literature  of  the  world 
and  of  all  time.  Nor  can  the  languages  of  Eome  and  Greece 
be  thrust  out  of  our  halls  of  learning,  or  excluded  from  the 
course  of  our  superior  education,  because  they  are  not  the 
extinct  languages  of  a  limited  spot  of  the  world's  surface; 
they  are,  in  an  important  sense,  the  languages  of  all  southern 
Europe,  of  England,  and  of  America.  It  is  a  perversion  of 
terms  to  speak  of  them  as  dead  languages,  and  to  call  upon 
us  to  bury  them  because  they  are  dead.  They  are  not  dead 
but  living,  and  we  cannot  bury  them,  endeavor  as  we  may. 


FREDERICK    A.    P.   BARNARD  385 

They  live  in  our  own  tongue,  they  live  in  our  literature,  they 
live  in  our  philosophy,  they  live  in  our  history,  they  live  in 
our  jurisprudence.  When  they  shall  be  actually  dead,  we  too 
shall  be  dead  like  them,  and  other  races  yet  unknown  to  his- 
tory shall  come  here  to  live  among  the  ruins  we  have  left. 

Nevertheless,  while  still  maintaining  these  views,  and 
indignantly  refusing  to  permit  himself  to  be  "  considered 
unfaithful  to  the  cause  of  good  letters,"  Dr.  Barnard 
avowed  "  the  belief  that  literary  colleges  should,  in  justice 
to  a  large  and  increasing  class  of  learners,  throw  open 
their  doors  more  widely  than  they  have  done  heretofore 
to  students  whose  aspirations  are  rather  scientific  than 
literary."  He  asked  for  nothing  more  than  a  beginning, 
and  he  informed  the  Board  of  Trustees  that  an  exceed- 
ingly modest  beginning  had  already  been  made  by  per- 
mitting the  Senior  class,  during  the  second  term  of  the 
year,  and  only  then,  to  exercise  a  certain  freedom  in  the 
selection  of  their  studies.  In  consequence  of  that  change, 
he  said,  a  greater  degree  of  diligence  and  a  larger  con- 
tentment had  been  secured  than  had  previously  prevailed 
in  the  same  period  of  the  academic  course. 

In  1871,  he  renewed  his  agitation  of  the  subject,  claim- 
ing that  a  further  and  more  thorough  investigation  of  the 
statistics  of  American  colleges  had  proved  his  assertion 
that  the  number  of  students  pursuing  a  strictly  collegiate 
course  was  steadily  diminishing  throughout  the  whole 
country,  while  the  demand  for  scientific  education  was 
everywhere  increasing.  In  the  long  run,  he  observed,  the 
popular  judgment  of  systems  of  education  must  prevail. 
If  any  system,  however  good  in  theory,  or  however  admira- 
ble in  its  results,  should  cease  to  be  adapted  to  the  exi- 
gencies of  life,  its  failure  would  surely  be  detected  by  the 
people,  and  unless  it  were  amended,  it  would  fall  into  dis- 
repute and  neglect.  The  popular  verdict,  when  clearly 
2c 


386  MEMOIRS   OF 

rendered,  must  be  accepted.  No  theory  could  stand  against 
it.  It  would  be  idle  to  prove  to  a  people  that  they  ought 
to  prefer  a  system  which  they  had  deliberately  made  up 
their  minds  not  to  prefer  ;  and  of  the  present  judgment 
of  the  people  of  this  country  there  could  be  no  question. 
The  statistics  of  colleges  in  the  State  of  New  York  showed 
a  state  of  facts  essentially  the  same  as  that  which  he  had 
previously  shown  to  exist  in  New  England.  Taking  up, 
for  instance,  at  random,  the  American  Almanac  for  1848, 
it  appeared  that  the  six  colleges  then  existing  in  the  State 
reported  in  that  year  940  undergraduate  students,  while 
in  1870,  though  the  number  of  colleges  had  been  actually 
doubled,  the  number  of  their  undergraduates  was  only 
1034,  showing  an  increase  in  twelve  years  of  only  ten  per 
cent,  while  the  population  had  increased  not  less  than 
fifty  per  cent. 

Such  a  fact  as  this,  he  maintained  to  be  as  significant  as 
it  was  startling  ;  and  he  held  that  its  significance  was 
shown  by  the  success  of  Cornell  University.  That  insti- 
tution had  been  established  on  the  elective  principle,  and 
from  its  first  opening,  its  halls  had  been  so  thronged 
with  students  that  in  the  third  year  of  its  existence  the 
number  of  its  undergraduates  was  greater  than  that  of 
any  three  of  the  colleges  of  the  State  which  had  been  in 
existence  for  half  a  century.  Elsewhere  a  similar  indica- 
tion had  been  manifest.  The  University  of  Michigan  had 
pursued  the  same  plan  with  similar  results  for  a  much 
longer  period  ;  and  a  remarkable  illustration  of  the  gen- 
eral tendency  of  the  public  mind  was  to  be  found  by  a 
comparison  of  Harvard  University  with  her  most  promi- 
nent competitor,  Yale  College.  For  many  years  these  two 
institutions  had  nearly  equally  shared  in  popular  favor, 
but  while  the  average  undergraduate  attendance  at  Yale 
had  remained  nearly  stationary  for  the  last  ten  years, 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  387 

Harvard,  under  the  elective  system,  had  increased  the  roll 
of  its  undergraduates  by  nearly  two  hundred.  These 
facts  were  too  suggestive  to  be  put  aside  ;  and  Dr.  Bar- 
nard, having  now  unequivocally  placed  himself  on  the  side 
of  the  new  system,  proceeded  with  characteristic  vigor  to 
assail  the  old. 

The  strongest  argument  in  favor  of  an  invariable  curric- 
ulum of  study  extending  through  the  college  course,  was 
its  effectiveness  as  an  exclusively  mental  discipline  ;  but 
the  assumption  that  it  ought  to  be  nothing  else  he  declared 
to  be  only  an  assumption  which  could  no  longer  be  ad- 
mitted. There  is  a  period  of  life  during  which  the  mind, 
like  the  body,  is  in  a  state  of  development,  and  it  is 
during  that  period  that  the  discipline  of  the  mental  facul- 
ties can  be  most  successfully  prosecuted.  There  comes  a 
time  at  which  the  body  has  attained  its  full  growth,  and 
there  is  a  time  at  which  the  mind  has  likewise  attained 
such  maturity  as  to  be  no  longer  susceptible  of  the 
plastic  influences  of  earlier  years.  In  infancy,  education  is 
almost  omnipotent.  In  early  boyhood,  the  educator  may 
force  the  faculties  into  almost  any  mould.  But  the  time 
comes  at  which  the  teacher  must  be  content  to  give  fair 
play  to  the  faculties  as  they  are,  and  when  a  youth  has 
reached  that  stage  of  development,  the  discipline  of  earlier 
years  must  be  frankly  abandoned.  Now,  it  was  a  singu- 
lar fact  that  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  century,  the  age  at 
which  boys  entered  college  was  very  much  earlier  than  in 
later  years,  and  the  discipline  which  was  appropriate  to 
young  boys  could  not  be  equally  appropriate  to  young  men 
because  a  youth  of  seventeen  or  eighteen  years  of  age  is 
not  susceptible  to  the  influences,  and  is  not  capable  of  the 
discipline,  which  may  rightly  be  applied  to  boys  of  thir- 
teen or  fourteen.  For  the  latter,  "  there  might  be  reason 
to  demand  that  the  entire  course  should  be  shaped  with  a 


388  MEMOIRS  OF 

view  to  mental  discipline  only.  As  respects  the  former, 
there  is  no  less  reason  for  requiring  that  a  principal  object 
should  be  to  impart  knowledge  for  the  sake  of  knowledge 
itself ;  and  though  this  should  not  be  the  governing 
object  throughout  the  whole  course,  it  ought  at  least  to 
give  character  to  the  later  years." 

The  second  reason  that  the  old  college  curriculum,  de- 
signed exclusively  for  mental  discipline,  was  no  longer 
expedient,  was  that  it  was  no  longer  practicable.  It  had 
already  in  fact  been  abandoned.  Originally,  the  subjects 
of  instruction  had  been  few,  and,  with  the  exception  of 
the  pure  mathematics,  they  had  been  literary  ;  but  this 
was  no  longer  the  case.  The  curriculum  had  been  over- 
loaded by  gradual  additions  which  were  utilitarian  and  not 
disciplinary,  and  the  effect  was  that  neither  mental  dis- 
cipline nor  the  utilitarian  purpose  was  attained.  It  would 
clearly  be  better  to  allow  either  the  one  or  the  other, 
instead  of  pursuing  a  policy  which  defeated  the  object  of 
both. 

A  third  reason  for  ceasing  to  insist  upon  an  invariable 
curriculum  was  that  the  colleges  were  the  only  institu- 
tions in  America  which  could  supply  the  training  de- 
manded by  the  public  and  by  the  necessities  of  the  age. 
Just  as  the  matter  stood,  colleges  professed  to  teach  nearly 
everything,  and  yet  they  were  hardly  able  to  pursue  a 
single  subject  beyond  its  rudiments.  The  majority  of 
students  did  not  become  sufficiently  proficient  even  in 
the  classics  to  be  able  to  read  the  works  of  classical 
authors  which  they  had  not  read  before,  and  it  could  not 
be  pretended  that  the  colleges  were  adequately  fulfilling 
the  function  of  scientific  schools.  He  therefore  concluded 
that  since  the  colleges  ought  not  to  abandon  the  classical 
field,  and  since  their  present  arrangements  made  it  impossi- 
ble to  supply  satisfactory  instruction  on  other  subjects 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  389 

without  interfering  with  the  classical  course,  there  re- 
mained no  other  alternative  than  to  allow  undergrad- 
uates to  select  the  studies  in  which  they  desired  to  become 
proficient.  Unless  that  wise  policy  were  adopted  they 
must  expect  the  disfavor  under  which  they  were  laboring 
to  increase  rather  than  diminish. 

In  1872,  Dr.  Barnard  reported  the  successful  operation 
of  the  very  moderate  and  purely  tentative  elective  system 
which  had  been  thus  far  adopted  in  the  Senior  class,  and  he 
noted  with  great  satisfaction  that  the  studies  which  had 
been  freely  chosen  by  the  students  had  not  been  "easy" 
studies,  but  rather  the  reverse. 

In  1874,  he  advocated  the  revival  of  the  "double 
course,"  which  had  once  been  permitted  in  Columbia  and 
which  had  afterwards  been  abandoned  because  it  did  not 
then  recommend  itself  to  the  public  mind.  Dr.  Barnard 
said : 

About  forty  years  ago  Columbia  College  made  the  experi- 
ment of  establishing  a  double  course;  but  this  experiment, 
after  a  trial  of  some  years,  was  finally  abandoned,  as  not  at 
that  time  seeming  to  meet  a  real  want  of  the  community.  The 
want  nevertheless  has  in  these  later  years  made  itself  very 
manifest ;  and  while  there  is  still  a  very  large  demand  for  the 
highest  literary  culture,  and  while  this  department  of  educa- 
tion is  that  which  it  is  doubtless  the  first  duty  of  Columbia 
College  to  promote,  it  is  still  true  that  there  are  many  youthful 
aspirants  to  learning  who  would  pursue  with  pleasure  a  scien- 
tific course  in  college  if  it  were  presented  to  them,  yet  who 
are  turned  away  from  the  highest  walks  of  education  when 
they  have  no  alternative  but  to  pursue  a  course  severely 
literary.  It  is  therefore  probable  that  the  institution  of  a 
double  course  in  the  college  would  at  this  time  be  attended 
with  greater  success  than  was  experienced  in  1830.  What 
makes  this  seem  more  probable  is  the  fact  that  at  the  pres- 
ent time,  the  students  attending  the  other  two  colleges  of  the 
city  are  very  largely  pursuing  what  is  called  the  scientific 


390  MEMOIRS   OF 

course,  or  the  course  in  which  the  sciences  of  nature  occupy 
the  principal  attention,  the  modern  languages  to  a  great 
extent,  or  entirely,  take  the  place  of  the  ancient,  and  the 
degree  conferred  is  that  of  Bachelor  of  Science.  In  the 
University  of  the  City  of  New  York,  the  number  of  students 
in  the  scientific  course  is  three-fifths  of  the  whole ;  and  in  the 
College  of  the  City  the  proportion  is  the  same.  These  facts 
would  seem  to  indicate  that,  by  the  institution  of  a  double 
course  in  the  College,  the  undergraduate  department  would  be 
made  materially  more  attractive;  while  there  would  not  be 
likely  to  occur  any  sensible  diminution  of  the  numbers  who 
pursue  the  regular  course  in  the  Arts. 

In  1876,  Dr.  Barnard  again  reported  the  satisfactory 
working  of  the  limited  application  of  the  elective  system 
which  had  been  introduced  into  Columbia,  and  recom- 
mended its  extension  to  the  Junior  year.  He  said: 

The  elective  system  of  study  has  now  been  to  a  moderate 
extent  in  operation  in  our  College  for  four  or  five  years.  The 
anticipations  of  favorable  results  from  its  introduction,  origi- 
nally entertained,  have  been  more  than  verified  by  the  actual 
experiment.  The  students  pursue  with  increased  alacrity  the 
studies  which  they  themselves  elect,  and  the  instructors  find 
their  task  made  more  agreeable  by  the  interested  attention  of 
the  classes.  As  yet  it  has  been  impracticable  to  give  a  large 
development  to  the  system.  It  has  been  extended  only  to 
the  Senior  class,  and  to  that  class  only  by  offering  an  alter- 
native choice  between  a  limited  number  of  studies  arranged 
in  pairs.  What  is  now  most  needed  for  the  improvement  of 
the  undergraduate  course  is,  after  the  reservation  of  a  certain 
number  of  subjects  indispensable  in  any  system  of  liberal  edu- 
cation as  subjects  to  which  all  shall  be  required  to  attend,  to 
throw  open  wide  freedom  of  choice  as  to  all  the  rest.  This 
might  with  propriety  be  done  with  the  studies  of  every  year 
after  the  first,  but  should  by  all  means  be  done  with  those  of 
the  Junior  and  Senior  years.  The  misadventure  of  a  close  cur- 
riculum of  study,  enforced  equally  upon  all,  is  that  it  confines 
the  teaching  of  the  college  within  an  exceedingly  narrow 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  391 

scope  and  makes  it  impossible  that  the  institution  shall  be- 
come what  the  university  in  its  theory  is  designed  to  be  — 
a  studium  generale.  The  range  of  the  teaching  of  Harvard 
University  in  its  department  of  Arts  at  present,  as  compared 
with  that  of  any  college  maintaining  a  close  curriculum,  may 
be  inferred  from  the  fact  that,  while  the  latter  teach  only  so 
much  as  any  single  student  can  learn  during  the  period 
allotted  to  the  course,  the  former  offers  a  choice  among 
studies  which  in  the  aggregate  amount  to  fourteen  times  as 
much  as  any  single  student  could  accomplish. 

With  most  American  colleges,  a  close  curriculum  of  study 
is  a  necessity  forced  upon  them  by  their  financial  feebleness. 
To  enlarge  the  scope  of  their  teaching  and  to  increase  studies, 
is  to  multiply  classes  or  subdivisions,  and  to  necessitate  an 
increase  in  the  corps  of  instruction  with  correspondingly  in- 
creased expenditure.  The  elective  system  will,  therefore,  prob- 
ably never  be  universally  adopted,  and  perhaps  not  generally. 
It  will  even  be  opposed  doubtless,  in  the  future,  as  it  has 
been  in  the  past,  for  reasons  drawn  from  a  theory  of  educa- 
tion suited  to  a  period  when  college  students  were  generally 
younger  in  years  than  at  present,  and  when  the  circle  of 
human  knowledge  was  much  narrower.  But  it  is  sure  to  make 
its  way  with  those  institutions  whose  resources  are  such  as  to 
allow  its  introduction.  And  it  is  only  upon  the  foundations 
afforded  by  this  limited  number  that  we  can  hope  to  see  in  this 
country  universities  grow  up,  in  which,  as  in  those  of  the  conti- 
nent of  Europe,  educational  culture  shall  receive  its  highest  and 
fullest  development.  Among  our  older  collegiate  institutions, 
there  is  no  one  which  has  hitherto  adhered  more  persistently 
to  the  theory  of  a  close  curriculum  than  Yale.  When,  nearly 
fifty  years  ago,  the  agitation  in  favor  of  what  has  since  been 
called  the  new  education  began,  the  Faculty  of  Yale  College 
were  earnest  in  resisting  the  threatened  encroachment  of 
the  time-honored  system  which  had  so  long  held  peaceful  pos- 
session of  all  our  schools  of  higher  learning.  Their  argument 
in  favor  of  the  actual  system  with  its  close  curriculum  of 
study  was  one  of  the  earliest  contributions  to  the  literature 
of  the  subject  in  this  country.  But  this  same  institution 
has  now  within  the  past  few  weeks  announced  an  entire 


392  MEMOIES  OF 

change  of  her  whole  plan;  and  henceforth  her  course  of 
teaching  will  be  nearly  or  quite  as  largely  elective  as  that 
of  Harvard  has  been  for  the  past  ten  or  fifteen  years. 

In  Columbia  College  it  seems  to  the  undersigned  that  a 
similar  change  must  soon  be  recognized  as  a  duty.  This 
institution  is  one  of  the  few  which  may  really  be  able  to 
make  themselves  universities  in  the  highest  sense;  schools 
in  which  the  seeker  after  knowledge  in  any  form  may  find 
what  he  wants.  The  development  must,  of  course,  be  pro- 
gressive, but  there  can  be  no  progress  without  a  beginning. 
The-  first  step  should  be  to  utilize  the  means  we  have  of 
enlarging  the  scope  of  our  teaching  without  necessarily  in- 
creasing the  number  of  our  teachers. 

Nothing  is  wanting  to  its  realization  but  the  enlargement  of 
the  accommodations  provided  for  the  department  of  Arts. 
With  apartments  in  which  students  could  profitably  employ 
themselves  when  not  under  instruction,  and  corresponding 
provision  for  the  teachers  that  may  pursue  their  studies  and 
investigations  when  not  employed  in  teaching,  the  efficiency 
of  our  College  as  a  school  of  instruction  could  be  made  greater 
than  at  present  manifold. 

In  1879,  Dr.  Barnard  said: 

Many  complaints  have  reached  the  undersigned  in  regard 
to  our  omissions  and  the  insufficiency  of  our  teaching  in  what 
we  undertake.  It  has  been  inquired  why  French,  and  Spanish, 
and  German,  and  Anglo-Saxon,  and  botany,  and  physiology, 
do  not  form  parts  of  our  regular  course;  and  why  Sanskrit, 
and  Hebrew,  and  Arabic,  and  quaternions,  and  the  calculus  of 
variations,  are  not  offered  to  students  whose  tastes  lie  in  the 
direction  of  those  studies.  These  are  a  few  of  our  omissions. 
As  to  our  insufficient  teaching,  one  critic  asserts  that  we  have 
driven  chemistry  into  a  corner ;  another,  that  we  have  turned 
history  out  of  doors ;  a  third,  that  mineralogy  and  geology  are 
almost  denied  a  hearing ;  a  fourth,  that  the  English  language 
and  English  composition  are  hardly  taught  at  all.  And  so  it 
goes  on.  No  subject,  in  the  opinion  of  those  who  esteem  them- 
selves the  best  qualified  to  judge,  is  properly  provided  for  in 
our  programme  of  study.  Nor  is  it  possible  to  make  such  pro- 


FREDERICK  A.  P.   BARNARD  393 

vision  as  shall  be  universally  satisfactory,  except  by  indefinitely 
extending  the  duration  of  the  course  on  the  one  hand,  or  by 
ceasing  to  require  the  candidate  for  graduation  to  include  in 
his  special  range  of  study  every  subject  which  the  college 
undertakes  to  teach,  on  the  other. 

The  principle  of  elective  study  is  the  key  which  solves  the 
whole  difficulty.  By  limiting  the  student  to  a  certain  number 
of  subjects,  sufficient  time  may  be  allowed  him  to  perfect  him- 
self in  each,  and  sufficient  time  may  be  allowed  the  teacher  to 
do  his  subject  justice.  The  college  may  at  the  same  time  en- 
large the  scope  of  its  teaching,  and  embrace  in  its  general 
scheme  of  instruction  every  subject  of  literary  or  scientific 
interest,  without  in  any  degree  diminishing  the  thoroughness 
with  which  each  branch  is  taught.  And  it  is  only  in  this  way 
that,  in  the  present  age,  any  college  can  hope  to  secure  and 
maintain  a  really  high  character  as  an  institution  of  learning. 
Its  teachers  may  be  learned,  and  personally  may  be  able ;  but 
the  character  of  the  institution  as  an  institution  depends  less 
upon  what  they  are  than  upon  how  much  they  teach.  The 
amount  of  their  teaching  is  limited  by  the  time  allowed  them 
to  accomplish  it  in;  and  that  time  will  be  reduced  to  a  mini- 
mum when  every  subject  must  have  its  place  in  a  close  curric- 
ulum.limited  to  four  years. 

In  1880,  he  again  urged  the  extension  of  the  elective 
system  of  study  throughout  the  Junior  and  Senior  years,  as 
"  a  logical  necessity  of  the  condition  in  which  the  College 
was  placed,'9  and  he  urged  its  adoption  as  the  only  proper 
preparation  for  a  system  of  post-graduate  instruction  which 
the  Board  of  Trustees  was  then  considering.  That,  he 
said,  "  is  the  direction  in  which  our  institution  is  destined 
to  make  its  usefulness  principally  felt.  It  is  so  because, 
in  this  principal  city  of  the  continent,  which  is  yet  perhaps 
to  be  the  greatest  city  of  the  world,  there  is  a  need  of  an 
institution  which  shall  stand  forth  as  the  expositor  and  the 
representative  of  the  highest  learning.  This  institution 
and  no  other  is  capable  of  taking  that  high  position,  and 


394  MEMOIRS   OF 

must,  by  force  of  circumstances,  be  compelled  to  take  it." 
He  denied  that  there  would  be  any  necessity  for  the  Col- 
lege to  abandon  its  present  field.  The  undergraduate 
department  need  not  fall  into  neglect,  nor  would  it  be  lost 
in  the  shadow  of  the  superior  development.  The  very 
contrary  was  probable,  for  as  the  institution  grew  in  any 
direction,  the  impression  of  its  importance  and  magnitude 
must  necessarily  grow  upon  the  public  mind  and  must 
necessarily  react  beneficially  upon  all  departments. 

In  consequence  of  Dr.  Barnard's  long-continued  urgency, 
the  elective  system  was  extended  to  the  Junior  as  well 
as  to  the  Senior  class,  and,  so  far  as  modern  languages  were 
concerned,  it  was  extended  to  all  classes  of  the  College. 
In  1882,  he  made  a  full  report  on  the  working  of  the  sys- 
tem, and  expressed  his  great  satisfaction  with  its  results; 
but  he  already  began  to  see  that  it  might  be  attended  with 
certain  disadvantages.  As  a  general  rule,  it  had  been 
experimentally  found  that  students  applied  themselves 
with  the  greatest  profit  to  studies  in  which  they  took  the 
greatest  pleasure ;  yet  it  was  undoubtedly  true  that  there 
were  some  whose  selection  was  controlled  by  a  desire  to 
acquit  themselves  of  their  academic  obligations  with  a 
minimum  of  labor,  and  selections  made  with  that  motive 
could  not  be  desirable.  The  great  body  of  young  men 
were  really  interested  in  their  studies,  but  it  might  be 
necessary  for  them  to  be  required  to  consult  with  their 
instructors  in  making  their  selections.  This  view  he  pre- 
sented with  even  greater  fulness  in  the  following  year, 
when  he  showed  as  the  result  of  the  elective  system,  so  far 
as  it  had  been  adopted,  that  there  had  been  a  progressive 
advance  in  scholarship  which  was  really  remarkable. 
Nevertheless,  he  recurred  to  the  recommendation  which  he 
had  made  in  the  previous  year,  that  the  student  should  be 
required  to  submit  his  list  of  studies  to  the  approval  of  the 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BAKNAED  395 

members  of  the  Faculties  under  whose  instruction  he  had 
been  in  the  previous  portion  of  his  course.  Many  of  the 
undergraduates  had  voluntarily  done  so;  and  in  other 
cases  members  of  the  Faculty  had  offered  their  advice  with 
good  effect.  Yet,  on  the  whole,  it  was  Dr.  Barnard's 
judgment  that  it  would  be  wise  to  modify  the  system 
so  as  to  offer  to  the  choice  of  the  student,  not  single 
studies  which  might  be  injudiciously  combined,  but  parallel 
courses  which  should  be  arranged  with  a  view  to  the  natu- 
ral interdependence  of  their  topics  and  with  due  regard  to 
the  logical  order  of  their  sequence,  so  as  to  maintain  the 
disciplinary  purpose  of  college  education  to  the  end  of  the 
course.  It  was  a  satisfaction  to  Dr.  Barnard  to  be  able  to 
say  that  the  Faculty  were  then  engaged  in  the  preparation 
of  a  scheme  intended  to  embrace  two,  or  perhaps  three, 
parallel  courses  properly  introductory  to  the  higher  studies 
leading  to  the  several  degrees  which  were  to  be  open  to 
students  in  the  post-graduate  department. 

This  is  his  last  recorded  communication  to  the  Board  on 
the  subject  of  elective  studies,  and  represents  the  conclu- 
sions which  he  had  reached  after  fourteen  years  of  discus- 
sion and  an  experience  of  several  years  of  the  elective 
system  in  operation. 


396  MEMOIKS  OF 


CHAPTER  XVI 

Dr.  Barnard's  change  of  view  on  the  elective  system  —  A  real  consistency 
underlying  it  —  Change  of  the  age  at  which  young  men  enter  college  — 
The  college  of  the  future  —  Graduate  fellows  as  instructors  —  Expan- 
sion of  the  college  into  a  university  —  The  graduate  department — The 
abandonment  of  the  undergraduate  department  suggested  —  Opening 
of  the  college  to  women  proposed  —  Reasons  urged  in  behalf  of  the 
measure  —  Movements  for  the  higher  education  of  women  in  Eng- 
land and  America  —  Objections  to  it  answered  —  The  measure  again 
urged  —  The  Faculty  of  Columbia  ready  either  to  receive  young  women 
as  students  or  to  teach  them  in  an  annex  —  The  Harvard  Annex  — 
Barnard  College  established  in  connection  with  Columbia  —  Table  of 
attendance  in  Columbia  College,  and  its  associated  schools  from  1865 
to  the  close  of  President  Barnard's  administration  in  1888. 

IN  the  change  of  Dr.  Barnard's  views  of  the  elective 
system,  there  was  far  less  inconsistency  than  appears 
upon  the  surface.  Indeed,  there  was  hardly  any  change 
of  his  fundamental  principles  of  education,  only  a  recog- 
nition of  the  need  of  some  change  in  their  application. 
He  never  ceased  to  insist  upon  the  necessity  of  systematic 
mental  training  as  a  preparation  for  the  serious  studies 
of  professional  life.  That  training  had  been  the  exclusive 
purpose  of  college  education  until  the  pressure  of  a  popu- 
lar demand  for  "  useful "  knowledge  had  induced  the 
colleges  of  this  country  to  add  to  their  curriculum  a  large 
number  of  studies  of  supposed  utility,  with  the  inevitable 
consequence  that  the  value  of  the  college  course  as  a  sys- 
tem of  mental  training  was  impaired,  while  the  amount 
of  useful  knowledge  which  the  student  could  acquire 
was  merely  elementary.  Year  by  year  it  grew  clearer 
to  Barnard's  mind  that  the  existing  system  was  wholly 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  397 

unsatisfactory,  that  the  original  simplicity  of  the  college 
course  could  not  be  restored,  and  consequently,  that  some 
other  change  was  imperatively  required. 

Another  fact  was  obvious ;  the  age  at  which  youths 
entered  college  was  considerably  later  than  it  had  been 
in  former  years.  When  colleges  were  intended  simply 
to  train  the  mental  and  intellectual  faculties,  students 
were  matriculated  while  they  were  mere  boys,  and  it 
was  not  unusual  for  them  to  complete  their  college 
course  at  the  age  of  sixteen  or  seventeen,  and  often 
much  earlier.  Thus  they  enjoyed  the  advantages  of 
mental  training  precisely  at  the  time  when  their  minds 
were  most  susceptible  of  discipline,  and  they  entered 
on  their  professional  studies  at  the  very  age  at  which  the 
student  of  the  present  time  is  entering  on  his  college 
course.  The  mental  discipline  which  had  been  well 
adapted  to  young  boys  at  the  most  plastic  period  of 
human  life,  was  obviously  less  suitable  to  young  men, 
and  hence  it  seemed  to  President  Barnard  to  be  necessary 
in  the  circumstances  that  the  college  course  should  now 
be  designed  to  furnish  something  more  than  the  mental 
training  which  in  different  circumstances  had  been  prop- 
erly regarded  as  its  only  purpose.  In  this  view  he  was 
confirmed  by  observing  that  academies  and  high  schools, 
below  the  grade  of  colleges,  were  now,  professedly  and 
often  successfully,  furnishing  the  mental  training  which 
was  the  original  purpose  of  the  college,  so  that  colleges 
not  only  might  but  ought  now  to  adapt  their  curriculum 
to  the  requirements  of  students  who  were  no  longer  mere 
boys  and  whose  minds  had  been  already  prepared  for 
serious  studies. 

Another  consideration  presented  itself.  At  the  age 
at  which  young  men  now  enter  college,  they  and  their 
parents  or  guardians  have  usually  formed  some  idea 


398  MEMOIRS   OF 

of  their  future  occupation  in  life,  and  it  is  natural  that 
they  should  desire  their  college  studies  to  be  more  or 
less  directly  serviceable  in  the  life  which  lies  before  them. 
To  the  future  clergyman,  classical  studies  will  always 
be  of  prime  importance,  and  the  study  of  Greek  will  be 
as  important  as  that  of  Latin;  to  the  future  lawyer, 
historical  studies  will  be  invaluable,  and  Latin  will  be 
of  more  importance  than  Greek;  a  student  who  intends 
to  devote  himself  to  a  scientific  profession  will  prefer 
mathematics,  chemistry,  or  some  department  of  natural 
history,  as  the  case  may  be,  and  he  will  nearly  always 
prefer  the  modern  to  the  ancient  languages.  No  student 
can  possibly  make  himself  equally  proficient  in  all  these 
subjects,  nor  is  it  desirable  that  he  should  attempt  it ; 
therefore,  a  wisely  advised  elective  system  of  some  kind 
seems  to  be  indispensable  if  colleges  are  to  meet  the 
necessities  of  education  in  the  present  age.  The  original 
purpose  of  continuous  mental  discipline  need  not,  and 
never  ought  to  be,  forgotten  ;  and  therefore  it  was  Dr. 
Barnard's  final  belief  that  under  a  well-regulated  elective 
system,  the  student  should  be  permitted  to  choose  between 
carefully  arranged  courses  of  study  rather  than  to  make 
an  arbitrary  selection  among  all  the  studies  for  which  the 
college  makes  provision. 

In  1873,  he  described  the  college  of  the  future  as  follows: 

The  college  of  the  future  is  destined  to  fulfil  a  higher  func- 
tion in  the  work  of  education  than  it  has  done  heretofore ;  it 
will  no  longer  be  restricted  to  the  business  of  developing  the 
germs  of  intellect  in  immature  minds,  by  an  indiscriminating 
system  of  study  and  drill  enforced  equally  upon  all,  a  task 
which  must  now,  to  a  great  extent,  be  borne  by  the  inferior 
schools  during  that  portion  of  the  young  learner's  time  which 
is  most  favorable  to  this  process ;  but  it  will  perform  a  service 
no  less  important  for  which  hitherto  no  proper  provision  has 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  399 

been  made,  that  of  giving  the  differential  culture  which  is 
required  to  bring  out  the  full  strength  of  minds  approaching 
maturity,  and  manifesting  as  they  do  so  the  salient  character- 
istics which  distinguish  each  individuality.  .  .  .  The  advan- 
tages of  such  an  intermediate  special  culture  are  too  obvious 
to  be  questioned.  In  the  discussions  which  have  been  recently 
going  on  in  England  as  to  the  desirability  of  a  reform  of  the 
fellowship  system  of  the  great  universities,  and  a  modification 
of  the  conditions  upon  which  fellowships  may  be  held,  and  an 
abridgment  of  the  terms  for  which  they  shall  be  granted,  and 
the  educational  value  of  the  fellowships  themselves,  has  been 
defended  on  the  ground  that  "  before  throwing  himself  for  good 
and  all  into  whatever  is  to  be  the  principal  business  of  his  life, 
the  student  still  wants  an  interval  to  complete  the  furniture 
of  his  mind,  by  study  of  a  freer,  larger,  and  more  independent 
sort."  But  fellowships  cannot  be  provided  for  all,  and  in  this 
country  we  have  as  yet  but  few.  The  devotion  of  the  later 
years  of  college  life  to  that  kind  of  teaching  which  makes  the 
increase  of  knowledge  the  principal  object,  and  selects  also  its 
subjects  with  special  adaptation  to  the  mental  characteristics 
of  the  learner,  furnishes  for  us  the  best  means,  and  the  only 
means  which  is  likely  ever  to  be  universally  available,  for 
supplying  that  defect  in  our  educational  system  which  must 
always  exist  if  the  transition  is  to  be  abruptly  made  from  the 
strictly  disciplinary  school  to  the  study  of  a  profession. 

At  the  very  best,  however,  the  studies  of  a  college 
must  be  elementary,  and  a  college  will  be  most  successful 
which  inspires  its  students  to  enter  upon  some  higher 
course  of  post-graduate  research.  Hence  Dr.  Barnard 
endeavored  from  the  first  to  prepare  the  way  for  courses 
of  post-graduate  instruction  on  which  students  should  be 
encouraged  to  enter  by  the  endowment  of  fellowships, 
and  for  technical  schools  in  which  they  might  prepare 
themselves  for  any  and  all  professions.  At  a  very  early 
time  in  his  administration,  he  began  to  sketch  the  outline 
of  a  plan  under  which  Columbia  College  should  become  a 
great  university.  In  1866,  he  recommended  the  immedi- 


400  MEMOIBS   OP 

ate  establishment  of  a  School  of  Civil  Engineering  to  be 
attached  to  the  School  of  Mines,  and  ultimately  Schools 
of  Practical  Astronomy;  of  Commerce;  of  Architecture; 
of  Mechanics,  Physics,  and  Chemistry,  applied  to  the  Arts, 
Agriculture,  and  Machinery;  of  Political  and  Civil  His- 
tory; of  Philosophy  and  of  Philology.  At  a  later  time  he 
added  to  these  the  Schools  of  Comparative  Philology, 
Archaeology  and  Ancient  Art,  the  Fine  Arts,  Ethnol- 
ogy, Anthropology,  Bibliography,  Library  Economics,  and 
the  Science  of  Education.  In  1871,  two  prize  fellow- 
ships of  the  annual  value  of  $500  were  established,  to  be 
awarded  to  the  most  meritorious  students  of  letters  and 
science  in  the  graduating  class  of  each  year;  and  after 
an  experience  of  fifteen  years,  it  appeared  in  1886  that 
nineteen  prize  fellows  had  been  appointed  whose  career 
had  amply  justified  the  wisdom  of  the  system.  In  1880, 
it  was  announced  that  post-graduate  instruction  would  be 
given  in  the  classics,  mathematics,  astronomy,  chemis- 
try, geology,  mineralogy,  history  and  political  science, 
philosophy,  the  English  language  and  literature  and 
the  language  and  literature  of  France,  Germany,  Spain, 
and  Italy.  In  the  same  year  was  established  the  School 
of  Political  Science,  which  has  certain  obvious  affinities 
with  the  School  of  Law,  but  is  not  a  professional  school. 
The  subjects  of  instruction  in  the  first  year  of  the  School 
of  Political  Science  were  placed  among  the  elective  studies 
of  the  Senior  year  in  the  undergraduate  department,  but 
the  remainder  of  the  course  was  properly  restricted  to  the 
graduate  department.  In  order  to  encourage  the  gradu- 
ate fellows  of  the  College,  Dr.  Barnard  earnestly  recom- 
mended that  they  should  be  employed  as  assistant  teachers 
in  the  undergraduate  department;  and  he  urged  his  rec- 
ommendation both  on  the  ground  that  such  assistance 
was  necessary  to  the  relief  of  professors  in  the  instruc- 


FREDERICK   A.    P.   BARNARD  401 

tion  of  large  classes  of  undergraduates,  and  also  on 
the  ground  that  a  student  who  has  himself  but  recently 
emerged  from  the  position  of  an  undergraduate  is  pecul- 
iarly well  qualified  to  assist  his  juniors  in  the  studies 
which  he  himself  has  recently  passed  through.  On  this 
point  he  quoted  the  following  passage  from  a  report  of 
the  Faculty  of  Yale  College  which  had  been  made  nearly 
half  a  century  before  : 

There  is  wanted,  on  the  one  hand  [says  the  report],  the 
experience  of  those  who  have  been  long  resident  at  the  institu- 
tion, and  on  the  other,  the  fresh  and  minute  information  of 
those  who,  having  more  recently  mingled  with  the  students, 
have  a  distinct  recollection  of  their  peculiar  feelings,  preju- 
dices, and  habits  of  thinking.  At  the  head  of  each  great  divis- 
ion of  science,  it  is  necessary  that  there  should  be  a  professor 
to  superintend  the  department,  to  arrange  the  plan  of  instruc- 
tion, to  regulate  the  mode  of  conducting  it,  and  to  teach  the 
more  important  and  difficult  parts  of  the  subject.  But  stu- 
dents in  a  college  who  have  just  entered  on  the  first  elements 
of  science,  are  not  principally  occupied  with  the  more  abstruse 
and  disputable  points.  Their  attention  ought  not  to  be  solely 
or  mainly  directed  to  the  latest  discoveries.  They  have  first 
to  learn  the  principles  which  have  been  in  course  of  in- 
vestigation through  successive  ages  and  have  now  become 
simplified  and  settled.  Before  arriving  at  regions  hitherto 
unexplored  they  must  pass  over  the  intervening  cultivated 
ground.  The  professor  at  the  head  of  the  department  may 
therefore  be  greatly  aided,  in  some  parts  of  the  course  of 
instruction,  by  those  who  are  not  so  deeply  versed  as  himself 
in  all  the  intricacies  of  the  science.  Indeed,  we  doubt  whether 
elementary  principles  are  always  taught  to  the  best  advantage 
by  those  whose  researches  have  carried  them  so  far  beyond 
these  simpler  truths  that  they  come  back  to  them  with  reluc- 
tance and  distaste.  Would  Sir  Isaac  Newton  have  excelled  all 
others  of  his  day  in  teaching  the  common  rules  of  arithmetic  ? 
Young  men  have  often  the  most  ardor  in  communicating  famil- 
iar principles,  and  in  removing  those  lighter  difficulties  of  the 

2D 


402  MEMOIRS   OF 

pupil  which,  not  long  since,  were  found  lying  across  their  own 
path. 

"No  argument,"  said  Dr.  Barnard,  "  could  apparently 
be  more  convincing  in  favor  of  the  system  which  we  have 
recently  adopted  here." 

Throughout  the  whole  period  of  his  administration  as 
President  of  Columbia  College,  Dr.  Barnard  steadily 
looked  forward  to  the  expansion  of  the  College  into  an 
university;  but  the  American  university  of  the  future, 
as  he  had  come  to  conceive  it,  was  not  to  be  merely  an 
association  of  schools  for  students  of  the  so-called  learned 
professions.  He  insisted  that  the  exclusion  of  scien- 
tific schools  from  the  university  organization  would  be 
unnatural  and  irrational,  because  the  distinction  is  founded 
on  tradition  and  not  on  culture.  He  maintained  also  that 
it  would  be  at  once  a  practical  and  an  economic  error 
which  must  be  wholly  avoided;  in  1882,  he  had  the  satis- 
faction to  congratulate  the  Trustees  that  the  College  had 
already  assumed  the  character  and  functions  of  an  univer- 
sity, while  its  university  expansion  had  not  in  any  man- 
ner impaired  its  usefulness  or  diminished  its  attractiveness 
as  a  school  for  undergraduates.  Nevertheless,  as  the  ideal 
of  the  university  was  gradually  realized,  he  began  to  en- 
tertain a  doubt  whether  it  might  not  be  advisable  to 
abandon  the  undergraduate  department.  In  his  last  two 
reports  to  the  Board,  he  discussed  that  question,  without 
at  first  committing  himself  to  the  opinion  that  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  School  of  Arts  was  necessary,  but  rather  sug- 
gesting certain  advantages  in  its  continuance.  Thus  in 
1887,  after  stating  the  progress  which  had  been  made  in 
the  graduate  department,  he  proceeded  to  say: 

That  this  superior  department  of  instruction  must  constitute 
hereafter  the  main  business  of  the  College,  becomes  every  day 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  403 

more  obvious.  The  field  is  one  which  is  not  as  yet  in  this 
city,  or  even  in  this  country,  adequately  occupied.  It  is  a 
field  in  which  the  importance  of  judiciously  applied  effort  is 
every  day  growingly  felt.  Each  year  a  constantly  increasing 
number  of  young  men  are  looking  round  for  aids  in  the  pur- 
suit of  knowledge  superior  to  those  which  our  colleges  afford ; 
and  each  year  sees  a  larger  and  larger  proportion  of  them,  dis- 
satisfied with  the  imperfect  facilities  which  they  find  at  home, 
resorting  to  the  great  universities  of  Germany  to  obtain  what 
they  need.  The  students  of  the  University  of  Berlin  alone 
number  at  present  more  than  five  thousand ;  and  of  these  sev- 
eral hundred  are  temporarily  expatriated  Americans.  Leipzig, 
Vienna,  Gottingen,  Heidelberg,  Tubingen,  Bonn,  and  many 
others,  draw  also  their  considerable  quotas  of  our  youthful 
countrymen.  This  deplorable  exodus  can  only  be  arrested  by 
providing  here  the  attractions  which  are  so  abundantly  offered 
in  foreign  lands.  These  attractions  will  unquestionably  be 
provided  here  at  home,  and  in  this  city  will  be  provided  by 
Columbia  College.  It  is  a  noble  and  magnificent  task  which 
our  institution  has  before  her,  and  it  is  one  which  will  here- 
after throw  into  shadow  all  that  she  has  accomplished  in  her 
past  honorable  history. 

An  indication  that  our  Trustees  are  beginning  to  be  awake 
to  the  urgency  and  the  importance  of  this  task,  is  made  mani- 
fest by  the  fact  that  there  is  now  pending  before  the  Standing 
Committee  on  the  Course  of  Instruction,  a  resolution  which  sug- 
gests the  immediate  adoption  of  energetic  measures  to  lift  the 
whole  plane  of  instruction  here  to  the  level  of  the  university 
standard.  The  resolution  even  suggests,  inferentially  at  least, 
the  expediency  of  abandoning  the  undergraduate  School  of 
Arts  entirely,  and  devoting  the  whole  strength  of  the  institu- 
tion to  its  superior  work.  This,  however,  would  be  by  no 
means  a  necessity.  The  maintenance  of  the  inferior  school 
would  not  in  any  manner  interfere  with  the  university  system ; 
while  it  might  rather  aid  the  latter  by  serving  to  it  as  a  valu- 
able feeder.  It  might  aid  it  also  in  another  way.  Since  to 
discontinue  the  undergraduate  department  would  cut  off  the 
revenue  now  derived  from  it,  the  Trustees,  in  adopting  such  a 
measure,  must  be  prepared  to  relinquish  a  corresponding  amount 


404  MEMOIRS   OF 

of  their  present  annual  income.  A  better  plan  would  be  to  re- 
tain this  income,  but  to  devote  it  to  the  maintenance  of  fel- 
lowships to  be  bestowed  on  promising  young  men  pursuing 
university  studies.  It  is  by  some  such  measure  as  this  that 
the  success  of  the  university  system  can  be  most  certainly  and 
most  expeditiously  secured.  The  Trustees  of  the  Johns  Hop- 
kins University  have  recognized  this  truth,  and  have  acted 
accordingly.  The  gratifying  success  which  has  attended  the 
efforts  of  that  corporation  to  encourage  university  study  in 
this  country,  has  been  unquestionably  attained  by  the  creation 
of  twenty  fellowships  of  the  value  of  five  hundred  dollars 
each  per  annum,  to  be  freely  offered  to  graduates  of  all  colleges 
equally,  and  bestowed  on  the  most  meritorious  among  the 
competitors. 

The  undergraduate  department  of  Columbia  College  yields 
a  revenue  of  thirty  thousand  dollars  per  annum.  Were  that 
wholly  devoted  to  the  support  of  fellowships,  it  would  main- 
tain no  fewer  than  sixty ;  and  the  consequence  would  be  the 
creation  here  of  a  nucleus  which  would  draw  around  it  in  a 
very  few  years  a  student  body  rivalling  in  numbers  some  of 
the  great  universities  of  the  European  continent. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  committee  who  have  in  charge 
the  resolution  above  referred  to  may  see  their  way  towards 
recommending,  as  the  first  and  most  efficacious  step  toward 
advancing  this  institution  to  the  grade  of  a  true  university, 
the  establishment  of  a  fellowship  system  like  this ;  a  system 
which,  if  not  embracing  at  once  so  large  a  number  as  sixty, 
may  at  least  be  sufficient  to  compare  favorably  with  the 
example  set  at  Baltimore. 

In  his  last  report  (for  the  year  ending  in  June,  1888), 
in  referring  to  a  resolution  pending  before  the  Board, 
he  took  higher  ground  by  urging  that  it  would  be  of 
advantage  to  the  educational  interests  of  the  country  if 
a  large  proportion  of  the  existing  colleges  could  be  sup- 
pressed ;  that  it  would  be  no  misfortune  if  Columbia 
College  should  cease  to  exist  as  a  school  for  undergradu- 
ate students ;  and  that  the  future  work  of  Columbia  must 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD  405 

be  more  and  more  that  of  a  proper  university.     The 
passage  is  as  follows : 

There  is,  in  the  inevitable  drift  of  things,  a  tendency  to 
concentrate  our  energies  upon  the  Graduate  Department.1 
This  has  been  so  distinctly  perceived  by  the  Trustees  that 
there  has  been  a  distinct  effort  made  from  time  to  time  to 
convert  Columbia  College  altogether  into  a  school  of  post- 
graduate instruction.  About  thirty  years  ago  this  effort  as- 
sumed the  form  of  a  publicly  declared  purpose,  and  after  a 
very  elaborate  investigation  resulted  in  the  constitution  of  a 
definite  university  organization.  The  time  was  not  ripe,  how- 
ever, for  so  large  a  step  of  progress,  and  the  effort  failed  to 
prove  a  success.  Out  of  it,  however,  grew  the  Law  School, 
which,  meeting  a  well-ascertained  public  want,  proved  imme- 
diately successful  and  has  been  permanently  maintained.  Some 
years  later  the  School  of  Mines  appealed  to  a  public  want 
similarly  ascertained,  and  was  accordingly  in  like  manner 

1  The  table  of  attendance  in  Columbia  College  and  its  Associated  Schools 
from  1865  to  1888,  which  is  appended  to  this  chapter,  shows  the  remark- 
able relative  change  in  the  number  of  undergraduate  collegians  compared 
with  that  of  the  professional  and  post-graduate  students  which  occurred 
during  President  Barnard's  administration.  It  is  noteworthy  that  for 
three  years  after  his  presidency  began,  Dr.  Barnard  confined  his  report 
to  the  College  proper  and  gave  no  detailed  account  of  the  Schools  of 
Medicine,  Law,  or  Mines.  From  1868,  when  he  began  to  report  all 
departments,  to  1888,  in  which  his  last  report  was  rendered,  the  number 
of  students  in  the  College  increased  from  140  to  233  —  a  gain  of  66  per 
cent,  while  the  total  attendance  in  the  professional  and  post-graduate 
schools  rose  from  625  to  1630  —  a  gain  of  161  per  cent ;  or,  omitting  the 
Medical  School,  from  306  to  821  —  a  gain  of  168  per  cent.  To  put  the 
comparison  in  another  way  :  If  we  omit  the  Medical  School,  the  under- 
graduate students  in  1868  were  31.4  per  cent  of  the  whole  number,  and 
in  1888  they  were  only  22.1  per  cent ;  or,  if  we  include  the  Medical  School, 
the  proportion  of  undergraduates  fell  from  18.3  per  cent  in  1868  to  12.5 
in  1888.  Nor  will  it  escape  observation  that  the  actual  as  well  as  the 
relative  number  of  undergraduates  fell  steadily  every  successive  year 
from  298  in  1882  to  the  close  of  President  Barnard's  Presidency  in  1888, 
when  the  number  was  233.  With  facts  like  these  before  him,  President 
Barnard  might  well  say  that,  "in  the  inevitable  drift  of  things,"  there 
was  "a  tendency  to  concentrate  their  energies  on  the  Graduate  Depart- 
ment." It  is  not  so  clear,  however,  that  he  desired  to  change  the  drift. 


406  MEMOIRS   OF 

successful.  The  operations  of  the  institution  have  in  recent 
years  extended  over  so  wide  a  field  that  the  original  college 
has  been  entirely  overshadowed,  and  a  doubt  has  been  raised 
whether  its  usefulness  has  not  ceased.  A  resolution  is  now 
pending  before  the  Board,  inquiring  whether  it  is  not  advis- 
able that  the  whole  scheme  of  education  in  Columbia  College 
should  be  raised  to  a  higher  plane,  and  this  involves  the 
further  question  whether  it  is  not  advisable  to  discontinue 
the  department  of  Arts.  So  long  as  this  question  remains 
under  discussion  before  the  governing  board,  it  would  not  be 
becoming  in  the  undersigned  to  pronounce  an  opinion  upon  it 
here.  He  may  be  permitted,  however,  to  say  in  this  place  that, 
if  the  question  were  merely  as  to  the  sufficiency  and  impor- 
tance of  the  work  proposed,  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  our 
Faculties  could  find  ample  and  adequate  occupation  if  they 
were  confined  to  giving  instruction  exclusively  to  graduate 
students.  On  the  other  hand,  such  has  been  the  excessive 
multiplication  of  undergraduate  colleges  in  our  country  in 
recent  years,  that  the  business  of  those  colleges  is  greatly 
overdone,  and  it  would  certainly  be  a  material  benefit  to  the 
educational  interests  of  our  country,  if  a  large  proportion  of 
the  existing  colleges  could  be  suppressed.  From  statistics 
gathered  by  the  undersigned  in  former  years  with  great  labor, 
it  was  made  manifest  that  while  in  the  last  half  century  the 
proportion  of  students  in  Arts  in  American  colleges  has  been 
gradually  but  steadily  diminishing,  the  number  of  colleges 
has,  on  the  other  hand,  more  than  correspondingly  increased. 
Since  about  1837  the  population  of  the  country  has  increased 
fourfold,  and  the  number  of  colleges  threefold,  while  the  num- 
ber of  students  in  Arts  has  in  the  mean  time  only  doubled.  In 
the  country  generally  the  number  of  students  under  instruc- 
tion at  any  given  time  is  in  a  proportion  of  about  1  to  2000 
or  2500.  In  1830,  the  average  attendance  on  the  existing 
colleges  was  sixty-seven  each,  and  in  1880,  about  forty  each. 
There  is  not  a  State  in  the  Union  in  which  the  number  of  col- 
leges is  not  greatly  in  excess  of  the  educational  needs  of  the 
population.  This  city  itself  may  be  taken  as  an  illustration. 
New  York  has  about  a  million  and  a  half  of  inhabitants.  It 
should  be  capable  of  furnishing,  therefore,  at  the  ratio  of  1 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  407 

to  2500,  six  hundred  undergraduate  students  in  Arts.  This 
is  not  a  number  greater  than  could  be  comfortably  provided 
for  in  a  single  college.  Nevertheless,  we  have  three,  not  count- 
ing the  minor  colleges  under  the  care  of  the  fathers  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church.  It  would  not  be  therefore  educa- 
tionally a  misfortune  if  Columbia  College  should  cease  to  exist 
as  a  school  for  undergraduate  students.  The  city  would  still 
be  fully  supplied  with  educational  advantages,  while  there 
could  be  no  doubt  that  this  institution  could  be  more  profitably 
employed  by  confining  itself  to  the  field  of  superior  education. 
Whatever  be  the  policy  pursued  in  this  matter,  nevertheless 
it  is  the  unavoidable  tendency  of  things  to  press  upon  Colum- 
bia College  more  and  more  constantly  from  year  to  year  the 
duty  of  providing  for  the  wants  of  the  superior  class  of  stu- 
dents, that  is  to  say,  the  business  of  proper  university  instruc- 
tion. The  location  of  the  institution  in  the  greatest  city  of 
the  continent  is  peculiarly  favorable  to  such  an  undertaking, 
and  though  the  College  is  not  possessed  of  funds  sufficient  to 
enable  it  to  carry  out  this  complete  design,  it  is  hardly  to  be 
doubted  that  provision  may  sooner  or  later  become  sufficient 
to  accomplish  this  object. 

While  Dr.  Barnard's  views  of  the  readjustment  of  the 
College  course  to  the  necessities  of  the  age  were  steadily 
expanding,  and  while  his  conception  of  the  development 
of  the  institution  into  a  school  of  universal  learning  was 
growing  steadily  clearer  and  more  practical,  he  began  to 
ask  himself  why  the  benefits  of  such  an  education  as 
Columbia  was  endeavoring  to  afford  should  be  confined 
to  one-half  of  the  youth  of  the  country.  After  long 
reflection,  he  reached  a  settled  and  unalterable  conviction 
that  colleges  ought  to  be  freely  opened  to  women  as 
well  as  to  men,  and  from  1879  to  1881,  he  urgently  pressed 
upon  the  Board  of  Trustees  the  expediency  of  admitting 
women  to  all  the  departments  of  Columbia.  In  this 
movement  he  was  heartily  sustained  by  the  Faculty,  and 
although  his  success  did  not  correspond  either  with  his 


408  MEMOIRS   OF 

desire  or  with  his  expectation,  his  agitation  of  the  subject 
was  not  unfruitful. 

Until  1879,  though  the  admission  of  women  as  students 
in  Columbia  had  been  warmly  advocated,  the  lack  of 
sufficient  space  in  the  College  buildings  had  made  it 
impossible  to  entertain  the  suggestion.  In  1879,  that 
difficulty  was  removed  and  Dr.  Barnard  promptly  sub- 
mitted to  the  Board  of  Trustees  the  question  whether  a 
measure  which  had  now  become  practicable  ought  not 
likewise  to  be  deemed  expedient.  He  said  : 

The  condition  of  the  College  is  now  such  as  to  justify  the 
suggestion  of  the  question  whether  its  advantages  should  not  be 
opened  to  young  women  as  well  as  to  young  men.  This  question 
has  been  brought  to  the  attention  of  the  Trustees  heretofore  by 
outside  parties,  and  the  reception  which  it  met  has  been  such  as 
to  indicate  that  the  minds  of  the  Board  are  not  favorably  pre- 
possessed in  regard  to  it.  There  has  been  hitherto,  however,  no 
room  for  considering  it  upon  its  merits  ;  for,  whether  regarded 
favorably  or  not,  so  long  as  the  College  was  confined  within  its 
recent  narrow  accommodations,  the  measure  has  been  impracti- 
cable. Not  that  the  admission  of  young  women  requires  any 
considerable  provision  of  space  greater  than  that  which  is 
necessary  for  young  men  only;  but  that,  in  arriving  at  and 
leaving  the  building,  they  need  their  separate  retiring-rooms 
and  cloak-rooms,  and  no  apartments  could  be  found  in  the  old 
building  suitable  for  this  purpose.  That  difficulty  no  longer 
exists.  The  measure  has  become  practicable.  There  can  be 
no  harm  in  inquiring  whether  it  is  not  also  expedient. 

In  favor  of  the  proposed  measure,  Dr.  Barnard's  main 
contention  was  that,  "  in  the  interests  of  society,  the  mental 
culture  of  women  should  not  be  inferior  in  character  to  that 
of  men."  Competent  persons  universally  condemned  the 
prevalent  education  of  women  in  which  the  useful  was 
subordinated  to  the  ornamental,  and  what  were  called 
accomplishments  took  the  place  of  solid  acquisitions. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  409 

"  The  demand  had  been  made,  and  its  reasonableness  had 
been  generally  conceded,  that  the  same  educational  advan- 
tages should  be  offered  to  young  women  which  young 
men  enjoyed."  So  far  there  was  agreement,  but  in  the 
answers  to  the  question,  how  the  demand  should  be  met, 
there  was  less  unanimity. 

One  obvious  method  of  reform  would  be  to  improve 
the  female  schools,  of  which  there  was  a  sufficient  number  ; 
but  the  radical  fault  of  the  existing  schools  was  that  they 
furnished  merely  a  superficial  and  ornamental  education, 
and,  since  their  instructors  could  not  be  expected  to  rise 
above  their  own  level,  the  schools  could  not  be  improved 
except  by  reconstruction. 

Another  method  of  meeting  the  demand  was  to  create 
colleges  like  Vassar  College  and  Rutgers  Female  College, 
of  the  same  form,  giving  the  same  instruction  and  con- 
ferring the  same  degrees  as  colleges  for  young  men.  The 
objection  to  this  method  was  that  such  colleges  could  not 
be  expected  to  give  instruction  of  equal  value  with  that 
which  might  be  obtained  in  the  longer  established  and  well 
endowed  institutions  which  had  been  provided  for  men ; 
and  if  it  were  admitted  that  women  had  a  right  to  a  liberal 
education,  it  was  illogical  not  to  admit  them  to  the  best. 

In  England  the  reasonableness  of  his  view  had  been 
tacitly,  though  only  partially,  admitted  by  the  creation  of 
Girt  on  College  in  the  vicinity  of  Cambridge,  in  which  the 
studies  of  the  women  were  the  same,  and  were  prosecuted 
under  the  same  teachers,  as  in  other  Cambridge  colleges. 
The  results  of  this  experiment  had  been  so  successful  that 
funds  had  been  raised  for  the  endowment  of  a  similar 
college  for  young  women  in  the  city  of  Oxford  ;  and  in 
our  own  country  Harvard  University  had  "instituted  a 
regular  course  of  college  instruction  for  women  on  the 
same  plan  as  Girton  College." 


410  MEMOIRS  OF 

This  solution  of  the  problem,  while  it  conceded  that 
women  ought  to  enjoy  equal  educational  advantages  with 
men,  likewise  assumed  that  students  of  different  sexes 
ought  not  to  attend  the  same  classes.  In  this  country, 
however,  this  opinion  was  not  by  any  means  universally 
prevalent.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  more  than  half  the 
colleges  of  the  United  States  admitted  young  women  on 
the  same  terms  as  young  men,  and  allowed  them  to  attend 
the  same  classes.  The  usage  was  more  general  at  the 
West  than  at  the  East ;  but  even  at  the  East,  it  had  been 
successfully  adopted  in  the  universities  of  Cornell  and 
Syracuse  in  the  State  of  New  York,  in  the  Boston  Univer- 
sity, Massachusetts,  and  in  the  Wesleyan  University,  Con- 
necticut ;  and  even  Yale  College  admitted  young  women 
to  its  School  of  Fine  Arts.  Excluding  the  educational 
institutions  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  there  were 
355  colleges  in  the  country ;  and  of  these,  183  were  open 
to  students  of  both  sexes. 

In  many  of  these  colleges  [said  Dr.  Barnard]  the  students 
are  permanently  resident,  separate  buildings  being  provided 
for  the  female  students.  The  Sage  College  at  the  Cornell 
University,  founded  by  the  liberal  friend  of  education  whose 
name  it  bears,  is  a  splendid  edifice  erected  for  this  purpose. 
In  others,  as  at  Syracuse,  the  students  of  both  sexes,  with  few 
exceptions,  attend  at  the  college  only  during  the  day,  and  out 
of  class  hours  reside  at  home  or  in  private  families.  This 
arrangement  relieves  the  instructors  of  responsibility  for 
general  supervision,  and  leaves  no  room  for  the  occurrence 
of  troublesome  questions  of  discipline. 

As  to  the  practicability  of  adopting  this  plan  in  our  college, 
no  question  will  be  raised ;  but  doubts  may  be  entertained  as  to 
its  expediency.  It  would  be  difficult,  nevertheless,  to  suggest  any 
reason  which  will  bear  very  close  examination,  why  it  should 
not  be  adopted.  The  admission  of  young  women  into  the 
classes  would  not  in  any  manner  interfere  with  or  embarrass 
the  processes  of  instruction  as  they  are  now  conducted.  No 


FREDERICK  A.  P.   BARNARD  411 

modification  of  the  arrangements  of  the  class-rooms  would  be 
necessary.  So  many  more  units  would  simply  be  added  to  the 
number,  and  so  many  more  names  to  the  class  roll.  In  every 
scholastic  exercise  the  young  women  would  be  regarded  as  the 
young  men  are  regarded  —  merely  as  students. 

What  objection  could  be  urged  against  the  measure  ? 
First,  and  chiefly,  that  it  would  be  an  innovation  upon 
immemorial  usage  ;  but  this  objection  represented  a  mere 
prejudice  of  conservatism,  which  "never  fails  to  rise  up 
against  novelties,  no  matter  how  cogent  the  arguments  by 
which  they  may  be  recommended." 

A  more  plausible  objection  was  raised  upon  the  ground 
that  the  average  female  intellect  is  inferior  to  that  of  the 
other  sex,  and  that  the  association  of  men  and  women  in 
the  same  classes  must  therefore  have  a  tendency  to  depress 
the  standard  of  scholarship.  To  this  Dr.  Barnard  replied 
that  experience  had  proved  the  contrary,  since  the  practical 
effect  of  the  system  where  it  had  been  adopted  had  in- 
variably been  rather  to  raise  than  to  depress  the  general 
average  of  scholarship.  At  Cornell  University,  for  ex- 
ample, where  the  system  had  been  in  operation  for  seven 
years,  the  requirements  of  admission  had  been  twice 
raised  and  the  term  examinations  had  been  made  steadily 
more  and  more  rigorous;  yet  the  number  of  under- 
graduates who  dropped  out  of  the  course  had  been 
diminished  from  26  to  16  per  cent  per  annum  of  the 
whole  number  of  students;  no  young  woman  had  been 
dropped  from  the  rolls  through  failure  at  an  examination  ; 
and,  according  to  a  statement  recently  printed,  the  last 
seven  years  "  had  witnessed  a  marked  improvement  in  the 
quality  of  the  whole  institution." 

Another  objection  to  the  plan  was  that  the  regular 
course  of  college  study  was  too  severe  for  the  delicate 
constitutions  of  young  women.  That  might  be  true,  but 


412  MEMOIKS   OF 

it  was  likewise  true  that  the  course  of  college  study  is  too 
severe  for  some  young  men,  and  it  was  very  doubtful 
whether  the  studies  of  a  regular  college  course  were  more 
exacting  or  more  exhausting  than  those  which  the  "  finish- 
ing" school  for  young  women  usually  heaped  upon  its 
victims.  It  was  "  inconceivable  that  the  exercise  of  the 
mind  upon  the  solution  of  an  algebraic  problem  or  the 
interpretation  of  a  passage  in  Homer  could  be  more 
exhausting  than  a  similar  exercise  through  French  ir- 
regular verbs,  or  even  so  much  so  as  the  confinement  of 
hours  daily  in  bending  wearily  over  the  drawing-table,  or 
drumming  on  an  ill-tuned  piano."  Of  course,  excessive 
study  is  injurious  to  young  persons  of  either  sex ;  but  the 
assumption  that  the  study  required  of  a  young  woman  by 
a  regular  college  course  would  be  excessive,  was  a  mere 
assumption  which  experiment  had  nowhere  verified. 

In  favor  of  the  proposed  plan,  Dr.  Barnard  urged  that 
"  the  presence  of  young  women  in  colleges  is  distinctively 
conducive  to  good  order.  The  complete  isolation  of  young 
men  from  all  society  except  their  own  tends  to  the  forma- 
tion of  habits  of  rudeness  and  to  disregard  of  all  the 
ordinary  proprieties  of  life."  The  presence  of  women  in 
colleges  counteracts  this  evil  tendency,  as  Dr.  Barnard's 
own  observation  and  experience  had  proved.  The  elder 
Silliman,  during  the  entire  period  of  his  career  as  a  pro- 
fessor in  Yale  College,  had  admitted  young  women  to  his 
lecture  courses  ;  Dr.  Barnard  himself  had  invited  women 
to  attend  his  lectures  in  the  University  of  Alabama,  and 
in  both  cases  the  results  had  made  it  evident  that  the 
presence  of  young  women  exerted  a  salutary  moral  in- 
fluence. If  it  were  feared  that,  although  the  association 
of  young  women  with  young  men  might  be  beneficial  to 
the  ruder  sex,  it  might  be  less  advantageous  or  even 
prejudicial  to  the  gentler  sex,  that  the  delicacy  and  re- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  413 

serve  which  are  so  great  a  charm  in  the  female  character 
would  be  worn  off  in  the  unceremonious  intercourse  of 
academic  life,  and  that  a  girl  who  entered  college  with 
shrinking  modesty,  would  be  likely  to  come  out  a  romping 
hoyden  or  a  self-asserting  dogmatist,  the  apprehension 
had  not  been  justified  by  experience  either  in  the  high 
schools  of  the  country  or  in  the  numerous  colleges  in 
which  students  of  both  sexes  are  admitted. 

Another  and  final  objection,  which  was  very  real  though 
seldom  mentioned,  was  the  probability  of  sentimental  en- 
tanglements. It  was  supposed  that  young  people  of  both 
sexes,  if  associated  in  the  same  institution  and  permitted 
to  meet  frequently  and  familiarly,  would  be  more  occupied 
with  each  other  than  with  their  books.  But  here  again 
an  appeal  to  experience  would  show  that  the  danger  is 
exaggerated,  and  that  "the  comparative  freedom  of  school 
intercourse  tends  far  less  to  excite  the  imagination  of 
youth  than  the  more  constrained  and  less  frequent  op- 
portunities of  converse  afforded  in  general  society."  Be 
that,  however,  as  it  might,  the  argument  would  not  apply 
to  Columbia  College,  where  there  would  be  no  opportunity 
of  intimate  association.  The  students  would  attend  only 
during  a  limited  number  of  hours  which  would  be  en- 
tirely occupied  by  the  exercises  of  the  day ;  there  would 
be  no  common  halls  of  assembly ;  the  young  women  would 
pass  directly  from  their  tiring-rooms  to  the  lecture-rooms  ; 
at  the  close  of  their  recitations  they  would  retire  in  the 
same  way,  and  throughout  the  college  course  they  would 
be  resident  in  their  own  homes,  and  surrounded  by  every 
protecting  safeguard  that  parental  solicitude  could  provide. 

The  question  which  Dr.  Barnard  thus  propounded  to 
the  Board  seemed  to  him  to  be  simply  this:  Whether  it 
was  really  desirable  that  the  educational  advantages 
offered  to  young  women  should  be  equal  to  those  which 


414  MEMOIKS   OF 

are  offered  to  young  men.  If  it  was,  young  women  ought 
not  to  be  excluded  from  the  institutions  where  such  advan- 
tages are  to  be  had;  if  it  was  not,  the  whole  proposal 
must  be  abandoned.  If  the  measure  should  be  approved, 
he  did  not  expect  it  to  be  followed  by  an  immediate  influx 
of  female  students,  because,  for  years  to  come,  very  few 
women  would  be  prepared  to  avail  themselves  of  the  op- 
portunity; but  he  expressed  the  conviction  that,  after  a 
time,  "a  very  considerable  attendance  might  be  antici- 
pated, and  thus  the  College  would  enter  upon  a  new  and 
important  field  of  usefulness." 
In  conclusion  he  said  : 

Whatever  may  be  the  fate  of  the  present  suggestion,  the 
undersigned  cannot  permit  himself  to  doubt  that  the  time  will 
yet  come  when  the  propriety  and  the  wisdom  of  this  measure  will 
be  fully  recognized ;  and  as  he  believes  that  Columbia  College 
is  destined  in  the  coming  centuries  to  become  so  comprehensive 
in  the  scope  of  her  teaching  as  to  be  able  to  furnish  to  in- 
quirers after  truth  the  instruction  they  may  desire  in  whatever 
branch  of  human  knowledge,  he  believes  also  that  she  will  be- 
come so  catholic  in  her  liberality  as  to  open  widely  her  doors 
to  all  inquirers,  without  distinction  either  of  class  or  of  sex. 

In  1880,  Dr.  Barnard  renewed  his  discussion  of  the  sub- 
ject in  an  elaborate  account  of  Queen's  College,  London, 
the  alumni  of  which  are  admitted  to  examination  and  take 
their  degrees  in  the  London  University  on  equal  terms 
with  the  students  of  King's  College ;  of  Newnham  Hall, 
Cambridge,  the  students  of  which  were  allowed  to  attend 
the  public  lectures  of  university  professors  and  to  take 
the  same  honor  examinations  as  students  of  other  col- 
leges ;  of  Lady  Margaret  Hall  and  Somerville  Hall, 
Oxford,  whose  students  pass  through  the  same  course, 
though  without  any  university  privileges,  as  the  male 
students;  of  Boston  University  in  this  country,  "which 
admits  young  women  as  freely  as  Oberlin  or  Antioch  or 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  415 

Berea"  ;  of  the  University  of  Michigan,  which  had  yielded 
unwillingly  to  a  popular  demand,  and  which,  since  the  ad- 
mission of  women,  had  been  more  prosperous  than  ever 
before ;  and  finally,  of  the  new  experiment  of  the  same 
sort  which  had  been  recently  begun  at  Harvard. 

In  1881,  he  again  pressed  upon  the  Trustees  the  impor- 
tance of  admitting  women  to  the  privileges  of  the  College. 
From  many  quarters,  he  said,  the  anxious  inquiry  had 
been  addressed  to  him,  Will  not  Columbia  College  do 
something  for  the  higher  education  of  our  girls  ?  The 
interest  in  the  question  had  become  deep  and  extensive, 
and  it  was  constantly  growing.  The  logic  of  events  had 
been  operating  slowly  but  with  irresistible  force.  The 
objections  to  the  admission  of  women  to  the  colleges 
had  one  by  one  been  abandoned,  and  it  had  been  clearly 
seen  that  in  order  to  make  adequate  provision  for  the 
education  of  women,  it  was  not  necessary  that  new  in- 
stitutions should  be  founded  at  an  enormous  cost,  but 
only  that  the  existing  institutions  should  be  wisely  and 
judiciously  used.  The  progress  of  public  opinion  had 
been  exhibited  in  the  tentative  experiment  of  the  so- 
called  Harvard  "Annex";  and  it  was  a  remarkable  fact 
that,  in  England,  Newnham  Hall  had  been  admitted  by 
the  Senatus  Academicus  of  the  University  of  Cambridge 
to  every  privilege  for  which  it  had  applied.  The  substan- 
tial triumph  of  Newnham  and  Girton  had  made  a  sensible 
impression  upon  the  public  mind  in  this  country  as  well 
as  in  England,  and  the  leading  American  journals,  without 
exception,  had  expressed  their  satisfaction  at  the  event. 
In  short,  the  drift  of  public  sentiment  was  steadily  towards 
the  opening  of  all  institutions  of  learning  to  female  students, 
and  Dr.  Barnard  strenuously  urged  that  Columbia  College 
should  at  once  comply  with  what  he  deemed  to  be  a  just 
and  reasonable  popular  demand.  In  concluding,  he  said : 


416  MEMOIRS   OF 

The  time  seems  to  have  fully  come  when  Columbia  College 
should  feel  herself  urged  by  every  motive  of  expediency  or 
duty  to  do  her  part  in  carrying  forward  this  noble  and  benefi- 
cent work.  The  public  mind  is  prepared  for  it;  a  large 
number  —  it  is  believed  a  majority  —  of  our  most  enlightened 
fellow-citizens  eagerly  demand  it ;  the  members  of  our  Faculty 
without  exception  favor  it ;  our  circumstances  are  such  as  to 
make  it  easily  practicable.  If  in  any  minds  there  are  still 
objections  to  the  system  which  elsewhere  exists,  under  which 
young  women  are  withdrawn  from  their  homes  to  be  gathered 
together  in  'numbers  in  academic  boarding-houses,  such  objec- 
tions can  have  no  application  here,  since  the  young  women 
received  as  students  at  Columbia  College  will  still  reside,  as 
the  young  men  do  now,  under  their  parents'  roof,  and  will 
continue  to  be  surrounded  by  all  the  beneficial  influences  of 
domestic  society.  If  there  are  any  who  except  to  the  arrange- 
ment under  which,  as  at  University  College,  London,  and  at 
the  Boston,  Cornell,  and  Michigan  universities  in  this  country, 
young  men  and  young  women  assemble  to  receive  instruction 
in  the  same  class-rooms  and  at  the  same  hours,  their  scruples 
may  be  removed  by  adopting  here  the  plan  of  the  Harvard 
"Annex,"  and  holding  the  exercises  for  the  two  classes  of 
students  separately.  The  Faculty  of  the  College  are  ready 
for  either  plan,  although  the  second  would  impose  upon  them 
a  very  unnecessary  increase  of  labor.  Indeed,  they  are  more 
than  ready,  for  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  they  are  prepared, 
and  are  quite  disposed,  if  necessary,  to  organize  a  scheme  for 
the  instruction  of  women  in  all  the  subjects  of  the  College 
course,  independently  altogether  of  the  Board  of  Trustees; 
and  that  they  would  do  so,  could  a  committee  of  citizens  be 
found  here  as  at  Cambridge,  willing  to  attend  to  the  nec- 
essary business  arrangements,  and  to  provide  rooms  for  the 
exercises  near  the  College,  if  the  use  of  the  College  class- 
rooms should  be  denied  them  for  the  purpose.  Such  a  scheme 
has  been  a  subject  of  conversation  among  members  of  the 
Faculty  on  many  occasions  during  the  past  year;  and  it 
may  probably  be  carried  into  effect  at  no  distant  day,  unless 
the  occasion  for  it  shall  cease  to  exist  in  consequence  of  the 
admission  of  women  as  students  to  the  College  itself. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  417 

When  this  subject  was  first  brought  to  the  notice  of  the 
Trustees,  in  1879,  it  failed  to  be  taken  into  serious  considera- 
tion ;  yet  it  is  known  that  the  proposition  was  not  unfavorably 
regarded  by  some  members  of  the  Board,  and  it  is  not  believed 
that  any  were  unalterably  opposed  to  it  on  principle.  What- 
ever objections  may  have  been  entertained  in  regard  to  it  are 
believed  to  have  related  to  matters  of  detail,  such  as  the  con- 
struction of  our  buildings,  and  the  capacity  of  our  lecture-rooms, 
rather  than  to  considerations  of  a  more  serious  nature.  It  is 
believed,  however,  and  it  can  be  easily  proved,  that  all  such  sup- 
posed difficulties  are  imaginary,  and  that  the  proposed  measure 
can  be  carried  into  effect  without  the  slightest  inconvenience. 

In  the  first  mention  of  the  subject,  in  the  report  of  the  year 
above  named,  the  opinion  was  expressed  that,  even  in  case  of 
an  immediately  favorable  action  by  the  Trustees,  some  years 
must  elapse  before  any  considerable  number  of  young  women 
would  be  prepared  to  take  advantage  of  the  opportunities  thus 
opened  to  them.  Such  an  opinion  would  not  be  justified  by 
the  state  of  things  existing  at  the  present  time.  The  under- 
signed has  reason  to  believe  that  within  the  past  two  years 
the  number  of  young  women  who  have  turned  their  attention 
to  classical  studies  has  greatly  increased ;  and  that  there  are 
now  not  a  few  of  suitable  age  in  our  city  who  are  so  well  up  in 
their  Latin  and  Greek,  that  they  could  probably  pass  without 
difficulty  the  entrance  examinations.  It  is  believed,  therefore, 
that  the  consequence  of  opening  the  College  to  the  admission 
of  women  would  be  an  early  and  very  material  increase  in  the 
number  of  our  students,  which  would  be  attended  with  an 
augmentation  of  the  revenue  from  tuition  fees,  amounting  in 
the  course  of  about  four  years  to  not  less  than  ten,  and  probably 
more  than  fifteen,  thousand  dollars  per  annum. 

The  measure  proposed  is  therefore  recommended  not  only 
by  the  consideration  that  it  is  right  in  itself  and  that  it  will 
greatly  increase  the  usefulness  of  the  College,  but  also  because 
it  will  be  advantageous  financially.  And  it  has  the  further 
recommendation  that,  being  in  the  direction  of  manifest  des- 
tiny, to  accept  it  promptly  would  be  a  graceful  act ;  while  to 
lag  behind  the  spirit  of  the  age  in  regard  to  it,  would  be  only 
to  be  coerced  after  all  into  accepting  it  at  last,  ungracefully. 
2i 


418  MEMOIRS   OF 

In  conclusion  on  this  subject,  the  undersigned  can  only  re- 
peat the  conviction  expressed  in  his  former  report,  that  the 
question  here  considered  is  in  this  institution  only  a  question 
of  time ;  and  that,  whatever  may  happen  this  year  or  the  next, 
Columbia  College  will  yet  open  her  doors  widely  enough  to 
receive  all  earnest  and  honest  seekers  after  knowledge,  without 
any  distinction  of  class  or  sex. 

In  1882,  though  Dr.  Barnard  had  abandoned  the  hope 
of  living  to  see  women  admitted  on  an  equal  footing 
with  men  to  all  the  departments  of  Columbia  College,  he 
once  more  put  on  record  his  unalterable  conviction  that 
it  ought  to  be  done. 

In  former  annual  reports,  the  undersigned  has  expressed 
to  the  Trustees  his  views  of  the  wisdom  and  the  justice  of 
extending  the  educational  privileges  of  the  College  to  young 
women  as  well  as  to  young  men.  It  is  not  his  intention  to 
reopen  the  argument  at  this  time  ;  but  it  is  due  to  consistency 
to  say  that  his  convictions  on  this  subject  remain  unchanged, 
or  rather  that  they  have  been  confirmed  and  strengthened  by 
observation  of  the  results  of  the  experience  of  other  institu- 
tions in  our  own  country  and  abroad  which  have  opened  their 
doors  impartially  to  students  of  both  sexes,  and  of  the  rapid 
and  extraordinary  change  of  sentiment  in  regard  to  this  ques- 
tion which  has  been  going  on  in  recent  years  among  our  fellow- 
citizens.  This  has  been  noticeable,  not  in  New  York  only, 
but  throughout  the  country.  Those  of  the  colleges  of  our 
country,  and  of  our  own  section  of  the  country,  which  have 
been  for  some  years  engaged  in  testing  by  experiment  the 
feasibility  of  this  plan  of  education,  though  some  of  them, 
like  the  University  of  Michigan,  accepted  it  reluctantly  and 
with  serious  misgivings,  express  themselves,  from  year  to  year, 
more  and  more  content  with  the  results  —  results  which  they 
have  found  to  be  not  only  reassuring  but  gratifying.  Reports 
from  England  inform  us  that  the  plan  is  meeting  the  best 
expectations  of  its  friends  at  Cambridge  and  in  London.  The 
fifteen  universities  of  Italy  are  accessible  to  men  and  women 
equally,  and  the  same  thing  is  said  to  be  true  of  the  univer- 
sities of  Eussia. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  419 

The  Executive  Committee  of  tlie  University  Convocation, 
a  gathering  annually  held  at  Albany  under  the  auspices  of 
the  Regents  of  the  University  of  the  State,  have  placed  the 
question  of  the  opening  of  the  colleges  to  women  among  the 
topics  to  be  discussed  at  the  ensuing  meeting  of  the  Convoca- 
tion in  July  next,  and  have  extended  to  the  undersigned  an 
invitation  to  be  present  and  to  participate  in  the  discussion. 
The  Secretary  of  the  Board  of  Regents,  Dr.  David  Murray, 
himself  an  educator  of  large  experience,  and  a  recognized 
authority  on  all  educational  questions,  in  communicating  the 
invitation,  remarks  that  "this  is  a  subject  in  which  all  the 
colleges  of  New  York  are  deeply  interested";  showing  that 
it  has  been  agitating  opinions  extensively  among  those  who 
direct  our  system  of  superior  education. 

In  the  city  of  New  York  no  one  can  have  failed  to  remark 
the  growth  of  interest  in  the  subject  during  the  past  year. 
The  conviction  of  the  justice  and  expediency  of  offering  equal 
educational  advantages  —  and  more  than  that,  the  same  iden- 
tical educational  advantages  —  to  the  youth  of  both  sexes, 
has  been  rapidly  diffusing  itself  among  all  classes  of  our 
fellow-citizens,  and  has  penetrated  at  length  profoundly  the 
most  highly  cultivated  and  refined  circles  of  New  York  society. 
A  conviction  so  widely  extended  and  entertained  by  so  many 
among  the  thoughtful  and  judicious  who,  in  any  community, 
are  the  recognized  leaders  of  public  opinion,  cannot,  whatever 
may  be  the  subject  to  which  it  relates,  but  have  a  substantial 
foundation  in  reason.  And  such  an  opinion  prevalent  among 
persons  so  worthy  of  consideration  for  character  and  social 
position  cannot  fail  to  command  respect,  and  when  it  relates 
to  a  matter  of  public  policy  cannot  fail  in  the  end  to  accom- 
plish some  practical  results.  Columbia  College  may  not  in 
our  own  day  be  opened  to  the  admission  of  women ;  but  that  it 
will  be  so  in  that  better  coming  time  which  awaits  another 
generation,  appears  to  the  undersigned  to  be  as  certain  as  any- 
thing yet  beneath  the  veil  of  the  future  can  be. 

Dr.  Barnard's  effort  to  have  the  privileges  of  Columbia 
College  thrown  freely  open  to  women,  unsuccessful  though 
it  seemed  to  be,  was  by  no  means  fruitless.  In  accordance 


420  MEMOIKS   OF 

with  his  recommendations,  women  were  permitted,  with 
the  consent  of  the  professors,  to  attend  the  lectures,  but 
were  not  admitted  to  matriculation  or  examination.  It 
was  found,  however,  that  even  this  privilege  was  contrary 
to  the  statutes,  which  forbade  attendance  on  the  College 
course  to  all  but  matriculated  students.  The  Trustees 
were  therefore  under  the  necessity  of  taking  some  deci- 
sive action.  They  were  not  yet  prepared  to  accept  Dr. 
Barnard's  views  of  "  co-education,"  nor  were  they  willing 
to  refuse  their  countenance  and  assistance  to  the  advo- 
cates of  the  higher  education  for  women.  They  therefore 
resolved  on  June  8,  1883,  that  a  course  of  collegiate  study, 
equivalent  to  the  course  given  to  young  men  in  Columbia 
College,  should  be  offered  to  such  women  as  might  desire 
to  avail  themselves  of  it.  This  course  was  to  be  pursued 
outside  the  College,  but  under  the  direction  of  the  Faculty. 
Though  women  were  not  to  be  admitted  to  any  of  the 
College  classes,  they  were  to  be  allowed  to  take  the  regu- 
lar examinations,  and  when  they  should  have  successfully 
passed  all  examinations  during  a  period  of  four  years,  they 
were  to  receive  the  Bachelor's  Degree.  During  the  next 
five  years  twenty-eight  women  were  enrolled  under  these 
conditions  ;  but  the  system,  if  it  could  be  called  a  system, 
was  a  signal  failure.  It  could  hardly  have  been  other- 
wise. The  women  were  admitted  to  the  same  exami- 
nations as  the  men,  while  they  had  none  of  the  privileges 
of  instruction  which  the  men  enjoyed,  and  the  exami- 
nations were  naturally  and  necessarily  prepared  with 
reference  to  class  instructions  from  which  women  were 
excluded.  The  professors  did  what  they  could  to  assist 
the  women  by  announcing  the  general  topics  of  examina- 
tion and  directing  them  to  books  of  reference.  Dr.  Bar- 
nard also  frequently  intervened  with  advice  and  encour- 
agement ;  but  the  arrangement  was  a  mere  makeshift 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  421 

and  had  no  success.  After  five  years  it  was  found  that, 
although  one  woman  was  admitted  to  a  special  degree  of 
L.H.B.,  not  one  had  been  able  to  take  the  regular  degree 
of  Bachelor  of  Arts. 

In  March,  1888,  a  memorial  was  presented  to  the  Trus- 
tees, proposing  the  establishment  of  an  institution  in  con- 
nection with  the  College  and  on  the  same  general  plan 
as  the  "  Annex  "  at  Harvard  University.  The  memorial 
was  carefully  and  favorably  considered,  and  the  request  of 
the  memorialists  was  granted,  substantially  on  the  fol- 
lowing conditions  :  The  students  of  the  Annex  were  to 
pursue  their  collegiate  studies  in  a  building,  near  the 
College,  to  be  provided  by  the  friends  of  the  movement  at 
their  own  expense  and  to  be  used  exclusively  for  purposes 
of  instruction,  not  for  the  boarding  or  lodging  of  students. 
The  property  of  the  institution  was  to  be  held,  its  affairs 
were  to  be  managed,  and  the  funds  to  meet  its  entire 
expenses  were  to  be  provided,  by  an  incorporated  associa- 
tion, the  trustees  of  which,  as  well  as  the  name  of  the 
institution,  its  constitution  and  its  regulations,  were  to 
be  subject  to  the  approval  of  the  Trustees  of  Columbia. 
The  women  were  to  pursue  the  same  academic  course, 
and  to  enjoy  the  same  advantages  of  tuition  by  the  same 
professors  and  other  instructors  as  the  undergraduates  of 
Columbia,  under  such  arrangements  as  to  prevent  inter- 
ference with  the  men's  classes.1  The  examinations  for 
entrance  and  all  term  examinations  were  to  be  conducted 
by  persons  appointed  by  the  Trustees  of  Columbia,  and 

1  At  the  present  time  (1895)  the  professors  are  not  necessarily  instruc- 
tors in  Columbia,  but  they  must  be  approved  by  the  President  of  Colum- 
bia. Under  this  arrangement,  one  woman  has  been  appointed  Dean  and 
another  woman  has  been  appointed  Professor.  Barnard  College,  as  the 
Annex  is  now  called,  has  recently  assumed  the  support  of  three  profes- 
sorships at  Columbia  College,  the  College  Faculty  rendering  equivalent 
service  in  the  classes  of  Barnard. 


422  MEMOIRS   OF 

all  degrees  were  to  be  conferred  by  Columbia.  Finally, 
if  the  experiment  should  not  be  found  to  work  satisfac- 
torily, the  Trustees  reserved  the  right  to  terminate  their 
connection  with  it  on  giving  proper  notice. 

Through  some  strange  misadventure  this  action  of  the 
Board  of  Trustees  was  not  communicated  to  the  memo- 
rialists for  several  months,  but  as  soon  as  it  was  made 
known  to  them  they  took  active  measures  to  carry  their 
plans  into  effect.  A  provisional  act  of  incorporation  was 
obtained  from  the  University  Board  of  Regents,  and  in 
October,  1889,  the  Annex,  as  it  had  been  called,  was  opened 
under  the  better  name  of  Barnard  College,  with  a  Freshman 
class  of  seven  members. 

Dr.  Barnard  did  not  live  to  see  the  opening  of  the 
College  which  bears  his  name  in  grateful  memory  of  his 
efforts  in  behalf  of  the  admission  of  women  to  the  highest 
privileges  of  education.  The  establishment  of  the  new 
college  in  close  connection  with  Columbia  was  exceedingly 
gratifying  to  him,  though  it  did  not  realize  his  wishes. 
He  regarded  it  as  essentially  a  compromise,  satisfactory 
in  so  far  as  it  was  a  movement  in  the  right  direction,  but 
of  questionable  advantage  so  far  as  it  might  prove  in  the 
future  to  be  an  obstruction  in  the  way  of  what  he  deemed 
to  be  the  better  plan  of  permitting  young  men  and  young 
women  to  pursue  their  academic  studies,  not  only  under 
the  same  instructors,  but  in  the  same  classes.1  To  a 
certain  degree  even  this  object  has  been  practically 
attained  in  the  connection  of  Barnard  College  with  Colum- 
bia. In  certain  classes  of  the  Senior  year,  especially  in 
philosophy  and  letters,  the  students  of  Columbia  and 
Barnard  study  together  ;  and  many  of  the  post-graduate 

1  The  success  of  Barnard  College  has  fully  realized  the  expectations  of 
its  founders,  and  it  is  believed  that  they  now  (1895)  prefer  the  plan  of  its 
organization  to  that  which  Dr.  Barnard  would  have  chosen. 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD 


423 


classes  of  Columbia  in  the  same  subjects  —  not,  of  course, 
the  scientific  schools  —  are  open  to  women,  subject  in  each 
case  to  the  approval  of  the  President  of  Columbia,  the 
Faculty,  and  the  particular  professor  whose  classes  a 
graduate  of  Barnard  may  desire  to  attend. 

TABLE  OF  ATTENDANCE  IN  THE  COLLEGIATE  DEPARTMENT  AND  ASSOCIATED 
SCHOOLS  OP  COLUMBIA  COLLEGE  FROM  1865  TO  1888  INCLUSIVE. 


COLLEGE. 

3 

S 

POL.  SCIENCE. 

POST-GRAD. 

WOMEN. 

LIBRARY  EOON. 

I 

MEDICINE. 

GRAND  TOTAL. 

1865  .  .  . 

150 

1866  .  .  . 

149 

1867  .  .  . 

139 

1868  .  .  . 

140 

182 

126 

446i 

319 

7651 

1869  .  .  . 

147 

204 

93 

444 

309 

753 

1870  .  .  . 

129 

230 

79 

438 

338 

776 

1871  .  .  . 

123 

243 

92 

458 

327 

785 

1872  .  .  . 

116 

291 

114 

521 

332 

853 

1873  .  .  . 

123 

371 

136 

630 

359 

989 

1874  .  .  . 

129 

438 

171 

738 

387 

1125 

1875  .  .  . 

152 

522 

209 

874 

452 

1326 

1876  .  .  . 

173 

573 

230 

976 

410 

1386 

1877  .  .  . 

196 

526 

227 

949 

439 

1388 

1878  .  .  . 

233 

462 

255 

950 

413 

1363 

1879  .  .  . 

251 

436 

264 

951 

485 

1436 

1880  .  .  . 

277 

451 

291 

1019 

513 

1532 

1881  .  .  . 

286 

456 

244 

15 

1003 

555 

1558 

1882  .  .  . 

298 

471 

272 

22 

6 

1054 

547 

1601 

1883  .  .  . 

290 

400 

376 

30 

12 

970 

543 

1513 

1884  .  .  . 

265 

365 

285 

42 

21 

6 

989 

505 

1494 

1885  .  .  . 

261 

367 

265 

51 

23 

7 

935 

490 

1425 

1886  .  .  . 

247 

344 

236 

73 

24 

13 

891 

502 

1393 

1887  .  .  . 

237 

409 

264 

74 

32 

20 

20 

996 

606 

1602 

1888  .  .  . 

233 

481 

228 

62 

43 

28 

30 

1054 

809 

1863 

1  In  these  totals  an  allowance  is  made  for  students  enrolled  in  more 
than  one  department. 


424  MEMOIRS  OF 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Barnard's  early  education  and  its  defects  —  Education  a  science  and  teach- 
ing an  art  —  Who  should  teach  the  teachers  ?  —  A  department  of  the 
theory  and  practice  of  education  proposed  —  European  examples  — 
General  defects  of  the  present  system  —  What  a  true  education  would 
be  —  An  ideal  school. 

IT  was  not  of  choice,  but  because  of  a  necessity  which 
came  to  him  in  consequence  of  a  great  misfortune,  that 
Dr.  Barnard  had  adopted  the  profession  of  a  teacher. 
He  had  entered  upon  it  with  no  knowledge  of  its  princi- 
ples and  with  no  instruction  in  its  practice,  taking  it  for 
granted  that  the  dry  and  profitless  routine  to  which  he 
had  himself  been  subjected,  was  the  natural  and  normal 
course  of  education.  The  work  of  the  teacher  in  prepar- 
atory schools,  as  he  had  learned  it,  was  to  set  formal 
tasks  and  to  hear  mechanical  recitations  in  which  the 
memory  alone  was  exercised,  while  the  faculties  of  obser- 
vation and  understanding  were  neglected  and  the  judg- 
ment was  ignored.  Like  many  other  teachers,  he  might 
have  continued  to  perform  his  duties  in  the  same  dry  and 
perfunctory  way,  if,  in  the  instruction  of  the  deaf  and 
dumb,  he  had  not  learned  the  better  method  of  appealing 
directly  to  the  intelligence  of  his  pupils.  From  the 
beginning  of  his  professorship  in  Alabama,  he  followed 
that  method  with  consistency  and  success.  He  did  not 
deny  the  necessity  of  class  drill,  though  he  thought  that 
its  advantages  were  greatly  overestimated,  and  he  con- 
sidered it  at  best  to  be  a  mere  preparation  of  the  mind 
to  receive  the  freer  and  more  spontaneous  instructions 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD  425 

of  the  lecturer.  At  a  later  time  lie  looked  back  upon 
his  own  early  education  with  amazement  and  disgust. 
Though  he  had  been  a  boy  of  quick  intelligence  and  of 
unusual  quickness  of  observation,  he  had  been  subjected 
to  a  slavish  drill  from  which  he  learned  only  words  that 
he  did  not  understand.  Of  the  world  around  him  he  was 
taught  nothing,  and  while  nearly  fifteen  years  of  his  life 
were  devoted  to  a  course  of  study  of  which  the  learned 
languages  were  by  far  the  greater  part,  he  had  never 
really  mastered  any  language.  He  had  been  compelled 
to  study  rules  of  Latin  grammar  before  he  had  any 
knowledge  of  Latin  words  and  sentences.  He  had  then 
been  made  to  translate  Latin  prose  and  poetry  into  such 
English  as  he  had  picked  up  in  reading  and  conversation, 
and  to  "  parse  "  the  words  which  he  translated  very  much 
as  he  might  have  put  together  the  pieces  of  a  mechanical 
puzzle.  It  does  not  appear  that  he  was  ever  taught  to 
write  a  single  sentence  of  Latin  prose  ;  and  although,  in 
one  school  which  he  attended,  and  in  which  the  pupils 
were  required  to  communicate  with  their  instructors  in 
the  Latin  language,  "there  grew  up,"  as  he  afterwards 
said,  "an  intelligible  conversational  dialect  which  im- 
proved in  elegance  as  time  went  on,"  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  the  scholastic  "  dialect,"  when  most  "  improved 
in  elegance,"  was  anything  better  than  a  barbarous  lingua 
franca.  In  Greek  the  same  system  was  pursued,  with 
only  this  difference,  that  there  was  less  of  it.  English  he 
was  never  taught  at  all.  His  study  of  other  modern 
languages  was  begun  after  he  had  left  college,  and  at  a 
time  of  life  when  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  learn  to 
speak  them  with  idiomatic  propriety.  The  net  result  of 
these  years  of  laborious  but  misdirected  study  was  this, 
that  Barnard  does  not  appear  in  his  whole  life  to  have 
read  one  line  of  Latin  or  Greek  for  his  own  satisfaction  ; 


426  MEMOIRS  OP 

that  his  ordinary  English  style  was  loose  and  diffuse ; 
and  that  his  use  of  modern  languages  was  confined  to  the 
reading  of  scientific  treatises  and  was  hardly  at  all  avail- 
able for  any  other  purpose.  Now,  it  is  beyond  all  ques- 
tion that  Barnard  had  a  natural  aptitude  for  the  acquisi- 
tion of  languages,  and  that,  if  he  had  been  properly 
taught,  or  even  let  alone,  he  might  have  formed  an  ex- 
cellent English  style.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  the 
senseless  system  of  miscalled  education  to  which  he  had 
been  subjected  had  operated  almost  entirely  to  his  disad- 
vantage in  the  study  of  language.  Meanwhile,  until  he 
became  a  student  at  Yale,  the  study  of  science  had  been 
wholly  neglected.  It  was  only  a  few  months  before  he 
went  up  for  examination  as  a  candidate  for  admission  to 
the  Freshman  class  that  he  mastered  the  difficulties  of 
arithmetical  fractions  and  proportion ;  and  it  was  only 
through  a  chance  meeting  with  a  peripatetic  lecturer  on 
natural  science,  that  he  was  led  to  engage  in  the  study  of 
the  phenomena  of  nature  for  which  his  whole  subsequent 
life  showed  that  he  must,  even  as  a  boy,  have  had  extraor- 
dinary abilities.  In  the  account  of  his  education  which 
he  published  a  few  years  before  his  death,  he  expressed 
the  doubt  whether  he  had  ever  been  educated  at  all ;  but 
in  private  he  spoke  much  more  strongly,  and  in  view  of 
the  facts,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  his  early  training 
could  properly  be  called  an  education,  or  whether  it  did 
not  rather  suppress  the  free  development  of  his  extraor- 
dinary natural  talents. 

Looking  back  to  his  own  experience,  Barnard  saw  that 
education  must  be  regarded  as  a  science  and  teaching  as 
an  art ;  and  that  unless  the  principles  of  the  science  are 
clearly  apprehended,  there  can  be  no  true  art  of  teaching. 
Therefore,  since  it  is  the  function  of  an  institution  of  the 
higher  learning  both  to  provide  competent  teachers  and 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  427 

to  set  an  example  of  the  best  methods  of  educational  train- 
ing, he  concluded  that  a  great  institution  like  Columbia 
College  ought  to  have  a  department  of  the  history,  theory, 
and  practice  of  education.  This  proposal  he  laid  before 
the  Trustees  of  the  College  in  1881,  and  he  pressed  it  with 
still  greater  urgency  in  1882.  He  did  not  ask  that  the 
department  should  at  first  be  organized  on  any  broad 
basis  ;  he  did  not  even  ask  for  the  establishment  of  a  pro- 
fessorship ;  but  he  urged  the  introduction  of  a  course  of 
lectures  to  be  delivered  by  distinguished  teachers  upon 
the  particular  topics  of  a  prearranged  programme.  In 
introducing  this  subject,  Dr.  Barnard  said  : 

It  appears  to  the  undersigned  that  the  time  has  come  when 
Columbia  College  may  very  properly  make  an  attempt  to 
supply  the  serious  defect  in  the  educational  system  of  our 
country  which  has  here  been  indicated.  A  department  em- 
bracing the  history,  theory,  and  practice  of  education,  though 
it  might  not  contribute  largely  to  the  course  of  undergraduate 
instruction,  would  bring  the  College  more  directly,  and  to 
more  effective  purpose,  into  contact  with  the  outside  world 
than  almost  any  other.  It  could  not  fail  to  enlist  the  interest, 
and,  with  a  judicious  arrangement  of  hours,  to  command  the 
attendance,  of  every  teacher  in  this  great  city  and  its  vicinity ; 
and  it  would  soon  become  so  attractive  as  to  draw  many  more 
from  a  distance. 

In  order  to  insure  to  a  scheme  like  this  the  highest  degree 
of  success,  it  would  be  advisable,  in  the  beginning,  not  to 
create  a  chair  to  be  filled  by  a  single  individual,  though  that 
has  been  the  plan  adopted  in  the  Scottish  universities  ;  but  to 
engage  a  number  of  distinguished  educators  to  give  lectures 
upon  particular  topics  according  to  a  prearranged  scheme, 
holding  these  lectures  at  night,  and  only  once  or  twice  a  week 
during  the  academic  year.  The  history  of  education  alone 
would  afford  material  for  a  large  number  of  such  lectures 
which  would  be  full  of  interest  and  instruction.  The  impor- 
tance of  an  acquaintance  with  this  history  on  the  part  of  every 
man  who  enters  this  profession  with  a  desire  to  be  useful  in 


428  MEMOIRS  OF 

it,  is  strongly  insisted  on  by  the  Hon.  Henry  Barnard,  editor 
of  the  American  Journal  of  Education,  and  formerly  United 
States  Commissioner  of  Education  at  Washington,  who  main- 
tains that  there  is  no  department  of  human  existence  in  which 
preliminary  historical  knowledge  is  so  next  to  indispensable 
as  in  this.  He  says :  "  By  just  as  much  as  young  teachers 
are  ardently  interested,  by  just  as  much  as  their  minds  are 
full  of  their  occupation  and  fruitful  in  suggestions  of  principles 
and  methods  for  prosecuting  it,  by  just  so  much  are  they  the 
more  liable  to  reinvent  modes  and  ideas  which  have  been 
tried  and  given  up  before,  and  thus  to  waste  precious  months, 
and  years  even,  in  pursuing  and  detecting  errors  which  they 
would  have  entirely  escaped,  had  they  learned  the  lessons  left 
them  by  their  predecessors."  The  history  of  education  has 
been  admirably  set  forth  in  the  comprehensive  works  of  Von 
Eaumer  and  Schmidt  in  German,  and  in  that  of  Gabriel 
Compayre  in  French;  but  with  the  exception  of  the  collec- 
tions of  Henry  Barnard,  embracing  translations  from  Von 
Eaumer  and  others,  entitled  "  German  Teachers  and  Educat- 
ors," originally  published  in  the  Journal  of  Education,  we 
have  nothing  of  a  corresponding  character  in  the  English 
language. 

After  giving  an  outline  of  the  lectures  of  Professor 
Meiklejohn  of  the  University  of  St.  Andrew  and  of 
Professor  Laurie  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  Dr. 
Barnard  continued : 

The  theory  of  education  as  given  in  these  university  courses 
embraces  an  inquiry  into  the  psychology  of  the  growing  mind, 
a  summary  of  the  knowledge  gathered  by  observation  in  regard 
to  this,  an  attempt  to  estimate  the  mode,  rate,  and  kind  of 
growth  by  experiment;  and  an  inquiry  into  the  relation  of 
various  kinds  of  knowledge  to  the  mind,  and  the  influence 
of  certain  thoughts,  emotions,  and  sets  of  circumstances  upon 
the  character.  The  growth  of  the  power  of  the  senses,  the 
memory,  the  understanding,  the  reason,  the  will,  the  imagina- 
tion, the  social  feelings,  are  next  made  subjects  of  examination. 
The  relation  of  the  religious,  moral,  and  intellectual  sides  of 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  429 

human  nature  to  each  other  are  discussed,  and  the  best  means 
of  building  up  a  sound  understanding  and  the  formation  of  a 
just  habit  of  action  are  inquired  into. 

The  portion  of  these  didactic  courses  which  relates  to  prac- 
tice is  devoted  to  an  examination  of  all  the  processes  at  pres- 
ent going  on  in  the  schools  of  the  country  or  the  world,  the 
relation  of  these  processes  to  the  growth  of  the  mind,  and 
their  value  considered  as  means  to  an  end.  These  processes 
are  necessarily  in  great  degree  dependent  upon  the  subject 
taught.  Thus  in  regard  to  languages,  the  lecturer  considers 
what  are  the  most  effectual  means  of  enabling  the  learner  to 
master  them,  what  are  the  mental  habits  to  be  created,  and 
what  the  difficulties  to  be  overcome,  whether  these  be  inherent 
in  the  language  itself,  or  whether  they  arise  out  of  the  cir- 
cumstances under  which  the  instruction  is  given;  and  how 
these  difficulties  may  be  reduced  to  a  minimum.  As  the  object 
aimed  at  in  teaching  the  modern  languages  is  not  the  same 
which  is  proposed  when  the  ancient  are  the  subject  of  instruc- 
tion, due  account  is  taken  of  this  difference,  with  the  modifica- 
tion it  may  suggest  of  the  methods  employed.  In  regard  to 
science,  and  especially  the  sciences  of  observation,  the  methods 
which  experience  —  in  this  department  of  education  the  best 
guide  —  has  shown  to  be  most  advantageous,  are  explained 
and  illustrated. 

The  conditions  under  which  a  love  of  elegant  letters  may  be 
most  effectually  awakened  are  also  inquired  into.  The  differ- 
ent special  subjects  usually  taught  in  schools  —  such  as  gram- 
mar, geography,  history,  composition  —  are  finally  considered 
in  detail,  and  the  order  in  which  their  several  parts  may  be 
most  judiciously  presented  to  the  learner  is  pointed  out.  The 
adaptation  of  particular  subjects  or  parts  of  subjects  to  par- 
ticular ages  is  discussed;  and  the  important  question,  how 
much  should  be  done  by  the  teacher  and  how  much  must  be 
done  by  the  pupil  in  order  that  he  may  profit  by  the  exercise, 
is  carefully  considered.  The  relations  of  the  various  subjects 
of  study  to  the  process  of  mental  development  are  investigated, 
that  is  to  say,  it  is  inquired  what  faculties  each  particular 
subject  is  best  fitted  to  call  into  exercise,  stimulate,  and 
strengthen.  And  finally,  the  characteristics  of  the  best  books 


430  MEMOIRS   OF 

on  the  several  subjects  are  distinguished,  and  the  value  of 
text-books  as  helps  to  the  educational  process  is  discussed  and 
weighed. 

Out  of  a  field  so  extensive  and  so  fruitful  as  this,  it  might 
be  practicable  to  select  the  topics  of  twenty  or  thirty  lectures 
to  be  given  at  Columbia  College  on  certain  evenings,  at  first 
not  more  frequently  than  once  a  week,  to  a  class  formed  of 
graduates  and  undergraduates,  but  mainly  of  teachers  belong- 
ing to  the  city  of  New  York.  The  value  and  usefulness  of 
the  course  would  mainly  depend  on  securing  a  considerable 
attendance  of  these  last.  In  order  to  be  ascertained  of  this,  it 
would  be  advisable  to  circulate  a  programme  showing  the  sub- 
jects of  the  successive  lectures  of  the  course,  with  the  names 
of  the  lecturers ;  and  to  issue  tickets  at  a  merely  nominal  rate 
entitling  the  holders  to  attend  the  entire  course,  with  others 
admitting  to  single  lectures.  The  course  only  to  be  commenced 
after  at  least  one  hundred  names  have  been  subscribed. 

The  successful  accomplishment  of  the  scheme  here  proposed 
would  naturally  open  the  way  to  the  establishment  in  our  Col- 
lege of  a  permanent  chair  of  education,  and  we  should  thus 
enter  upon  a  new  field  of  usefulness  not  inferior  in  importance 
to  any  we  have  heretofore  occupied.  In  doing  this  we  should, 
for  a  third  time,  have  taken  a  new  departure,  and  a  step  in 
advance  of  all  our  contemporaries  and  competitors.  We  have 
created  the  first  and  only  successful  School  of  Mines  upon  the 
continent ;  and  we  have  established  the  only  school  in  which 
a  young  man  can  obtain  such  a  training  as  may  properly  fit 
him  for  the  duties  of  political  life.  If  into  a  great  national 
industry,  which  has  heretofore  been  prosecuted  by  ignorant 
and  wasteful  methods,  we  have  introduced  economy  and  in- 
telligence, and  if  in  a  public  service  which  has  been  worse  than 
ignorant  and  wasteful,  we  have,  by  the  instrumentalities  we 
have  created,  laid  the  foundation  for  a  coming  substantial  re- 
form, we  have  in  neither  of  these  ways  done  more  to  advance 
the  welfare  of  our  own  people,  or  to  benefit  the  world,  than 
we  shall  have  done  when  we  shall  have  made  it  possible  that 
those  to  whose  hands  is  to  be  entrusted  the  education  of  each 
rising  generation,  shall  be  themselves  properly  educated  to 
their  own  responsible  profession. 


FEEDEEICK  A.   P.   BAENAED  431 

The  idea  of  making  the  philosophy  of  education  a  part  of 
our  university  teaching,  and  of  properly  educating  men  to  the 
business  of  education,  is  not  one  of  recent  occurrence  with  the 
undersigned.  It  was  among  the  objects  particularly  pointed 
out  by  him  in  the  address  in  which,  seventeen  years  ago,  he 
inaugurated  his  connection  with  the  College,  as  objects  which 
in  the  future  it  would  become  the  duty  as  it  would  be  the  priv- 
ilege of  Columbia  College  to  accomplish.  The  time  seems  to 
be  at  length  ripe  for  the  discharge  of  that  duty.  Should  the 
opportunity  not  be  improved  by  us  it  will  doubtless  soon  be 
seized  by  some  competitor,  and  the  honorable  precedence  which 
is  now  within  our  reach  will  be  snatched  from  us. 

We  should  make  a  great  mistake  if  we  should  regard  the 
inculcation,  from  a  university  chair,  of  the  philosophical  prin- 
ciples which  ought  to  guide  in  the  framing  of  educational  sys- 
tems, as  a  matter  of  merely  speculative  interest.  It  involves, 
on  the  other  hand,  consequences  of  the  highest  practical  im- 
portance. The  actual  system  universally  prevalent  in  our 
country  at  the  present  time  is  marked  by  faults,  not  to  say 
absurdities,  of  serious  gravity,  which  a  discussion  of  the  true 
principles  of  educational  philosophy  could  not  fail  to  detect, 
and  which  need  only  to  be  exposed  to  be  corrected.  Unfort- 
unately the  most  pernicious  of  these  errors  is  one  of  which 
the  injurious  results  are  experienced  by  that  portion  of  the 
young  who,  being  destined  from  childhood  to  enjoy  the  bene- 
fits of  what  is  called  a  liberal  education,  are  undergoing  what 
is  called  a  preparation  for  college.  For  these  there  is  laid 
down  a  stereotyped  course  of  study,  consisting  mainly  in  a 
very  thorough  drill  in  the  elements  of  the  Latin  and  Greek 
grammars,  and  in  the  perusal  of  large  portions  of  works  of 
classical  antiquity  of  high  literary  character.  The  process 
commences  with  most  at  the  early  age  of  eight  or  ten,  and 
with  many,  as  was  the  case  with  the  undersigned,  as  early  as 
six.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that,  at  this  period  of  men- 
tal and  physical  immaturity,  the  abstractions  of  grammar  are 
entirely  above  the  comprehension  of  the  infantile  intellect. 
The  child  who  is  told  that  "  a  substantive  or  noun  is  the  name 
of  anything  that  exists  or  of  which  we  have  any  notion,"  or 
that  "prepositions  serve  to  connect  words  and  to  show  the 


432  MEMOIRS  OP 

relation  between  them,"  would  vainly  strive  to  gather  a  dis- 
tinct concept  from  these  bewildering  propositions;  and  in 
point  of  fact  he  does  not  strive  to  do  so.  He  merely,  at  the 
cost  of  severe  and  irksome  effort,  lays  away  these  verbal  jingles 
in  his  memory,  along  with  cords  of  equally  useless  rubbish 
forced  upon  him  in  cruel  disregard  of  his  helplessness,  or  of 
the  unfitness  of  such  intellectual  food  for  his  feeble  powers 
of  digestion.  The  theory  is,  that  the  nice  logical  distinctions 
which  are  embodied  in  grammatical  definitions,  and  the  com- 
plicated relations  of  words  and  clauses  which  find  expression 
in  the  intricacies  of  syntactical  rule,  constitute  the  material 
for  a  salutary  and  strengthening  exercise  of  the  reflective 
faculties,  comparison,  analysis,  judgment,  and  the  rest.  The 
fact  is  that  they  do  not  exercise  those  faculties  at  all,  since  in 
failing  to  reach  the  understanding  they  fail  of  the  first  essen- 
tial to  such  a  result.  Nor  is  the  case  much  better  when  we 
pass  from  language  considered  only  as  an  instrument,  to  the 
literature  of  which  language  is  the  form.  The  song  of  Virgil 
and  the  eloquence  of  Cicero  are  almost  as  far  above  the  capac- 
ity of  the  juvenile  reader,  as  the  logical  niceties  of  grammar 
are  beyond  his  mental  grasp.  The  consequence  is  that  some 
three  or  four  years  of  the  most  impressible,  the  most  interest- 
ing, and  the  most  valuable  period  in  the  life  of  a  boy  whose 
lot,  in  an  educational  point  of  view,  is  commonly  supposed  to 
be  especially  enviable,  is  filled  up  with  an  unbroken  and  dreary 
monotony  of  meaningless  sounds,  which  leaves  behind  it  no 
impression  save  that  which  may  be  produced  upon  his  jaded 
memory. 

Now,  if  we  consider  the  case  of  this  boy  in  the  light  thrown 
upon  it  by  the  study  of  psychology,  we  shall  be  presently  aware 
that  we  have  begun  his  education  at  the  wrong  end.  It  is  at 
once  illogical  and  unnatural  to  attempt  to  stimulate  into  activ- 
ity the  reflective  faculties  of  his  intellect  before  he  is  yet  in 
possession  of  any  considerable  stock  of  knowledge  on  which  to 
employ  them.  The  comparison  of  qualities,  the  study  of  rela- 
tions, the  combination  of  different  ideas,  and  the  deducting  of 
conclusions  are  processes  which  require  as  their  indispensa- 
ble antecedent  condition  a  considerable  acquaintance  with  the 
objects  of  thought  themselves  on  which  such  processes  must 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  433 

necessarily  be  founded.  Moreover,  if  we  will  observe  the  order 
in  which  the  intellectual  faculties  spontaneously  unfold  them- 
selves when  their  natural  accomplishment  is  left  undisturbed 
by  influences  from  without,  we  shall  discover  that  those  are 
earliest  awake  whose  function  is  to  gather  the  knowledge  of 
outward  things.  The  powers  of  observation,  or  the  perceptive 
faculties  as  they  are  called,  are  in  the  child  in  the  highest 
state  of  activity  from  the  earliest  period  of  conscious  existence. 
The  restless  curiosity  of  children  is  proverbial.  Everything 
that  is  new  is  interesting  to  them,  and  they  are  never  satisfied 
till  they  understand  it.  Since  also,  at  their  time  of  life,  most 
things  which  they  encounter  are  new,  there  is  no  end  of  the 
inquiries  with  which  they  constantly  assail  those  who  are  older, 
and  whom  they  presume  to  know  more  than  themselves.  The 
conclusion,  therefore,  which  theory  and  observed  facts  equally 
justify  and  force  upon  us  is  that  the  educational  process 
should  commence  with  the  culture  of  the  perceptive  powers, 
and  that  the  earliest  years  of  the  child's  life  should  be  devoted 
to  the  business  of  storing  him,  or  permitting  him  to  store  him- 
self, with  facts  of  useful  knowledge.  The  studies  assigned  to 
him,  if  studies  in  the  ordinary  sense  should  be  assigned  to  him 
at  all,  should  be  such  as  to  minister  to  his  insatiable  desire  for 
knowledge;  that  is,  to  keep  alive  and  not  to  repress  those 
eager  faculties  which  are  constantly  reaching  out  to  seize  upon 
and  assimilate  all  that  is  novel  in  the  outward  and  visible 
world.  A  judicious  course  of  culture  of  such  a  character  pur- 
sued at  this  early  period  of  life,  whether  with  or  without  the 
aid  of  books,  will  impart  to  the  subject  of  it,  not  only  an  im- 
mense fund  of  valuable  and  accurate  knowledge  which  other- 
wise would  be  acquired  later  with  labor  infinitely  greater,  or 
perhaps  not  acquired  at  all,  but  also  a  habit  and  a  power  of 
exact  observation  which  no  amount  of  labor  later  in  life  would 
be  adequate  to  secure,  but  which  to  their  possessor  are  posses- 
sions of  priceless  value. 

These  acquisitions,  the  actual  course  of  mental  training 
usually  pursued  with  boys  in  our  preparatory  schools  does 
nothing  whatever  to  cultivate.  On  the  other  hand,  it  tends  to 
prevent  their  attainment.  By  immuring  an  unhappy  lad  within 
the  four  blank  walls  of  a  school-room,  and  constraining  him  to 
2r 


434  MEMOIRS   OF 

fasten  Ms  thoughts  upon  a  series  of  abstractions  to  which  the 
power  of  his  intelligence  is  unequal,  we  subject  his  perspec- 
tive faculties  to  a  long-continued  and  unnatural  inaction,  by 
which,  if  they  are  not  completely  paralyzed,  they  are  certainly 
dwarfed,  and  prevented  forever  from  attaining  even  that  de- 
gree of  development  which  nature  alone,  unassisted  by  educa- 
tional helps,  would  have  given  them.  The  same  lad  in  the 
out-door  air,  with  his  attention  intelligently  directed  to  the 
thousand  imperfectly  understood  objects  of  interest  surround- 
ing him  on  every  side,  would  rapidly  gather  an  immense  store 
of  valuable  facts  of  knowledge  which  would  be  serviceable  to 
him  all  his  life;  and,  better  than  that,  would  acquire  those 
powers  of  quick  discernment,  accurate  judgment,  and  prompt 
decision,  which  form  the  most  important  elements  of  the 
intellectual  character. 

But  if  the  system  commonly  pursued  in  the  mental  training 
of  our  boys,  during  the  period  of  their  preparation  for  entrance 
upon  the  college  course,  were  not  condemned  for  its  violation 
of  every  sound  principle  of  educational  philosophy,  it  could 
not  escape  condemnation  when  we  come  to  consider  its  results. 
Young  lads  are  usually  kept  in  the  preparatory  schools  for  at 
least  three  years  —  many  are  there  more  than  twice  as  long. 
They  will  by  that  time  be  found  to  have  committed  pretty 
thoroughly  to  memory  the  definitions  and  rules  of  their  Latin 
and  Greek  grammars,  without  very  clearly  understanding  the 
words  in  which  they  are  expressed,  and  to  have  pretty  well 
mastered  the  various  inflections,  regular  and  irregular,  of 
nouns,  adjectives,  and  verbs;  and  they  will  also  have  suc- 
ceeded in  reading,  by  dint  of  incessant  resort  to  lexicons,  a  few 
hundred  pages  of  some  selected  Latin  and  Greek  authors.  But 
none  of  them  will  have  any  proper  knowledge  of  the  Latin  and 
Greek  languages,  or  will  be  able  to  read  with  facility  Latin  or 
Greek  books  taken  up  at  random,  even  the  very  books  and  the 
parts  of  the  books  which  they  have  read  before.  Yet  through- 
out all  their  school  years,  their  time,  their  attention,  and  their 
almost  intermittent  labor  are  given  to  the  study  of  those  lan- 
guages only.  It  is  true  that  in  the  examinations  for  admis- 
sion to  college,  some  slight  knowledge  of  a  few  other  subjects 
is  required,  but  it  is  universally  known  that  the  substantial 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  435 

requisitions  are  Latin  and  Greek;  and  that  when  these  are 
satisfactory,  other  matters  are  easily  arranged.  Now  it  is  per- 
fectly certain  that  no  person  of  ordinary  capacity  and  of  toler- 
ably mature  intellect  could  devote  his  exclusive  attention  for 
four  or  five  years  to  the  study  of  any  language  whatever,  with- 
out in  the  end  being  able  to  read  it,  if  not  to  speak  it,  fluently. 
The  fact  that  this  never  happens  with  a  juvenile  school-boy 
even  after  seven  or  eight  years  of  the  most  careful  tuition  in 
the  best  preparatory  schools,  is  sufficient  evidence  that  there 
is  a  grave  fault  somewhere ;  and  the  fault  is  very  clearly,  as 
has  just  been  shown,  in  the  fact  that  the  subject  is  presented 
prematurely,  and  therefore  ineffectually,  to  a  mind  which  de- 
mands an  aliment  of  a  very  different  nature. 

But  the  evil  does  not  end  with  the  imperfect  results  of  this 
species  of  preparatory  study  as  tested  by  the  amount  of  knowl- 
edge which  it  secures.  The  habits  of  study  acquired  in  the 
school  in  which  the  memory  is  mainly  depended  on  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  understanding,  are  carried  into  college,  and  operate 
throughout  the  educational  course  as  a  drag  upon  substantial 
progress.  The  consequence  is,  that  it  continues  to  be  generally 
no  less  true  of  our  graduates  than  it  is  of  boys  leaving  school, 
that  they  are  quite  incapable  of  taking  up  and  reading  fluently 
books  which  they  have  not  read  before,  in  either  of  the  learned 
languages,  nor  in  many  cases  even  books  which  have  formed 
the  subjects  of  their  daily  lessons  in  their  latest  college  years. 
It  is  somewhat  surprising  that  the  singular  inadequacy  of  the 
results  obtained  in  the  large  majority  of  cases,  after  so  great 
an  expenditure  of  time  and  wearying  labor,  has  not  long  since 
attracted  attention  and  challenged  inquiry  into  its  cause.  Its 
cause  is  unquestionably  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  the  study 
of  the  dead  languages  is  usually  forced  upon  lads  at  an  age 
when  their  mental  development  is  not  sufficiently  advanced 
to  enable  them  to  pursue  it  intelligently ;  and  more  than  that, 
that  it  is  made  to  crowd  out  other  studies  which  the  mind,  in 
its  immature  state,  finds  congenial,  and  even  requires,  for  the 
promotion  of  its  healthful  growth.  No  lad  of  less  than  four- 
teen or  fifteen  years  of  age  is  capable  of  taking  up  with  advan- 
tage the  study  of  a  language  so  artificial  in  its  structure  as  the 
Latin  or  the  Greek ;  still  less  when  the  method  of  presentation, 


436  MBMOIBS   OF 

as  is  the  case  in  all  our  schools,  inverts  the  natural  order,  and 
substitutes  synthesis  for  analysis.  And  even  an  age  so  ad- 
vanced as  fourteen  is  too  early,  unless  the  previous  years  have 
been  filled  up  with  a  judicious  culture,  in  which  the  boy  has 
been  required  to  learn  nothing  which  he  could  not  understand, 
and  has  been  thus  led  into  forming  habits  of  depending  on  his 
understanding  and  not  on  his  memory  alone  for  what  he  ac- 
quires. After  an  adequate  period  of  such  earlier  culture,  there 
is  no  sort  of  doubt  that  the  average  boy  will  be  able  to  acquire, 
in  two  years  at  the  outside,  a  far  more  satisfactory  acquaint- 
ance with  Latin  and  Greek  than  is  at  present  the  outcome  of 
five  or  six,  commencing  from  a  point  as  many  years  earlier. 

The  subjects  which  are  best  adapted  to  form  the  material  of 
this  previous  culture  are  those  which  concern  the  objects  and 
phenomena  of  the  natural  world,  beginning  with  plants,  ani- 
mals, and  the  materials  of  which  the  earth  is  composed  —  that 
is  to  say,  with  the  sciences  of  botany,  geology,  and  mineralogy. 
These,  from  the  endless  variety  of  beautiful  and  curious  objects 
which  they  present,  afford  an  inexhaustible  source  of  grati- 
fication and  surprise.  They  arouse  curiosity  and  keep  it  con- 
stantly awake ;  they  satisfy  the  eager  desire  to  know ;  they 
stimulate  the  perceptive  powers  into  constant  activity,  and 
sharpen  the  power  of  quick  and  accurate  observation.  As  time 
goes  on,  they  afford  to  the  reflective  faculties  such  gentle 
exercise  as  is  suitable  to  their  nascent  condition;  as  when, 
for  instance,  distinctions  of  species  are  recognized  by  the 
comparison  of  individual  objects  as  to  their  resemblances  or 
differences ;  or  when,  from  the  study  of  the  qualities  of  objects, 
the  uses  may  be  discovered  to  which  they  are  applicable. 
That  these  things  will  interest  children  of  very  tender  years 
has  been  tested  abundantly  by  experiment,  and  is  probably 
with  most  persons  a  certainty  founded  on  their  personal  recol- 
lection. The  fact  that  they  do  so  interest  them  is  nature's 
testimony  to  the  truth  that  they  constitute  the  intellectual 
aliment  which  the  infant  mind  requires  for  its  sustenance  and 
healthy  growth. 

To  the  subjects  here  specified,  which  may  be  called  the 
sciences  of  classification,  may  also  very  fitly  be  added  those 
which  depend  on  observation  and  experiment,  such  as  chem- 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BAKNARD  437 

istry  and  the  various  branch.es  of  physics,  excluding,  however, 
under  this  latter  head  all  that  transcends  the  power  of  direct 
observation.  The  first  of  these  classes  of  sciences  deals  with 
visible  objects  in  respect  to  form,  the  second  to  facts  and 
phenomena  in  reference  to  law.  Experimental  illustration  of 
the  operation  of  the  laws  of  nature  affords  the  most  fascinating 
description  of  entertainment  which  can  be  presented  to  the  juve- 
nile mind.  And  in  addition  to  the  world  of  novel  truths,  often 
startling  in  their  interest,  which  it  offers  to  the  understanding, 
it  affords  material  admirably  suited  to  the  healthful  exercise 
of  the  reasoning  powers,  at  the  moment  when  they  are  begin- 
ning to  awaken  into  life.  Moreover,  the  multiplied  examples 
which  these  sciences  present  of  conclusions  drawn  from  pre- 
mises systematically  arranged,  accustom  the  mind  to  habits  of 
correct  inference  from  facts  of  observation,  such  as  charac- 
terize those  whom  we  call  practical  men,  or  men  of  sound  judg- 
ment in  the  affairs  of  life. 

It  would  also  be  highly  advantageous  if  a  child  at  this  early 
period  could  acquire,  by  natural  means,  a  familiar  knowledge 
of  some  one  or  more  of  the  modern  languages  of  Europe.  Not 
by  the  method  of  the  schools  —  not  by  beginning  with  a  weary 
drill  on  the  abstractions  of  grammar,  followed  by  a  series  of 
laborious  text-book  readings  with  the  aid  of  a  lexicon ;  but  by 
oral  lessons  in  actual  speech,  in  which,  from  the  beginning,  the 
pupil  learns  to  say  something  significant  and  to  understand 
something  said  to  him;  in  which,  in  short,  he  acquires  a 
foreign  tongue  by  the  same  inartificial  means  by  which  he 
acquired  his  own.  This  kind  of  linguistic  exercise  addresses 
the  powers  of  observation  no  less  than  the  natural  sciences. 
The  child  chops  no  logic  about  his  words,  but  picks  up  only 
what  he  hears,  and  he  easily  becomes  interested  in  the  acqui- 
sition on  account  of  the  large  addition  which  it  makes  to  his 
power  of  expression.  This  study,  so  pursued,  is  not  only  to  be 
recommended  for  its  uses  as  an  instrument  of  early  culture, 
but  because  the  acquisition  to  which  it  leads  is  of  priceless 
value,  and  because  its  attainment  in  later  life  is  always  more 
difficult  and  never  so  nearly  perfect.  In  childhood  the  organs 
of  speech  are  flexible  and  adapt  themselves  with  facility  to 
the  peculiarities  of  pronunciation  of  foreign  tongues.  It  is 


438  MEMOIRS   OF 

quite  possible,  therefore,  that  an  English  child  may  grow  up 
to  speak  French  and  German  like  a  native,  but  this  is  never 
true  of  one  whose  acquaintance  with  those  languages  com- 
mences in  adult  life. 

A  boy  who  has  been  subjected  from  the  age  of  ten  or  earlier 
up  to  the  age  of  fifteen  to  a  course  of  training  like  that  here 
indicated,  will,  at  the  end  of  that  time,  have  acquired  an 
immense  stock  of  ideas  which,  under  our  present  system,  he 
either  never  acquires  at  all,  or  acquires  only  as  a  part  of  that 
instruction  which  colleges  are  now  compelled  to  give,  and  to 
give  at  the  expense  of  something  of  a  superior  order  for  which 
they  might  otherwise  have  room.  But  this  is  not  the  princi- 
pal advantage.  The  principal  advantage  is  that  he  will  have 
reached  this  point  with  a  mind  so  harmoniously  developed  in 
all  its  powers,  that  it  is  prepared  to  take  hold  successfully 
of  those  studies  which  at  present  encumber  so  unprofitably 
the  earlier  years,  and  to  master  in  a  comparatively  brief  time 
the  difficulties  of  the  Latin  and  Greek.  Two  years  after  this 
period  spent  on  these  languages  would  bring  the  youth  to  the 
age  of  seventeen,  more  thoroughly  versed  in  them  than  is 
the  case  with  one  out  of  a  dozen  at  present ;  besides  which  his 
superior  command  over  his  faculties,  a  consequence  of  the 
salutary  discipline  to  which  they  have  been  subjected,  would 
give  him  an  additional  advantage  of  inappreciable  importance. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that,  with  the  prevalence  of  better  views 
of  the  philosophy  of  education,  this  great  and  long  standing 
abuse  may  be  corrected.  It  is  to  be  hoped  and  expected  that 
its  reform  may  be  one  of  the  earliest  consequences  of  the 
inauguration  in  our  country  of  a  systematic  course  of  teaching, 
of  which  the  science  of  education  may  itself  be  the  object.  In 
the  mean  time,  it  is  somewhat  surprising  that  as  yet  there  has 
arisen  no  individual  reformer  with  sagacity  enough  to  see  the 
evil,  and  with  resolution  enough  to  set  himself  up  in  defiance 
of  the  pernicious  traditions  of  the  centuries.  Could  such  a  one 
arise,  and  should  he  exhibit  for  a  single  year,  in  practical 
operation,  a  system  of  mental  culture  adapted  to  the  period 
of  childhood,  and  founded  on  truly  philosophical  principles, 
the  results  would  be  probably  surprising,  but  could  not  fail  to 
excite  admiration  and  arouse  a  public  opinion  which  would 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  439 

speedily  force  the  adoption  of  methods  similarly  rational  in 
all  the  schools. 

The  success  of  such  a  system  would  depend  not  merely 
upon  the  subjects  which  should  form  the  substance  of  its 
teaching,  or  the  order  in  which  these  should  be  taken  up,  but 
still  more  possibly  upon  the  manner  in  which  they  should  be 
presented. 

The  "ideal  school,"  as  Dr.  Barnard  proceeded  to  de- 
scribe it,  was  as  nearly  as  possible  all  that  the  schools  of 
his  own  childhood  and  early  youth  had  not  been. 

Let  us  endeavor  to  draw  an  ideal  picture  of  such  a  model 
school  and  of  its  plan  of  daily  operation.  Its  site  we  will 
suppose  to  be  chosen  in  the  country,  near  to,  but  not  within 
the  limits  of,  some  pleasant  village,  in  a  region  diversified 
with  hill  and  dale,  mountain,  rock,  stream,  forest,  and  cul- 
tivated land.  The  building  should  command  an  extensive 
prospect,  in  which  may  be  distinguished  the  windings  of 
the  streams,  the  lines  of  the  thoroughfares,  the  divisions  of  the 
lands,  the  farm-dwellings  dotted  here  and  there  through  the 
landscape,  and  the  clustered  houses  of  the  village  in  the  dis- 
tance. These  features  are  not  suggested  as  desirable  merely 
because  they  may  add  to  the  attractiveness  of  the  place,  though 
that,  of  course,  will  be  their  natural  effect ;  but  their  presence 
is  of  some  importance  because  they  constitute  useful  auxilia- 
ries in  the  educational  plan.  The  boys  on  entering  the  school 
will  require  no  outfit  except  plenty  of  good  rough  clothing  and 
stout  shoes,  suitable  for  outdoor  exercise  and  work.  It  goes 
without  saying  that  they  are  to  be  supplied  with  abundance  of 
heathful  food,  and  that  satisfactory  provision  is  to  be  made 
for  their  physical  comfort  in  every  respect.  The  school-room, 
which  will  become  rather  a  hall  for  conversation,  or  a  resort 
where  the  boys  may  occupy  themselves  according  to  their  own 
pleasure,  than  a  place  for  teaching  in  the  ordinary  sense,  will 
be  spacious  and  airy.  Every  boy  will  have  his  place  in  it,  and 
will  be  furnished  with  a  desk  of  ample  dimensions  and  with 
abundant  materials  for  drawing,  as  well  as  with  a  capacious 
cabinet,  for  the  arrangement  and  preservation  of  the  speci- 


440  MEMOIRS  OF 

mens  in  natural  history  or  other  interesting  objects  which  he 
may  collect.  The  boys  should  be  divided  into  sections  of  not 
more  than  twelve  each,  and  every  section  should  have  its 
instructor  permanently  attached  to  it,  who  will  need  to  be  a 
pretty  thorough  proficient  in  every  branch  of  natural  science. 
There  should  be  a  large  workshop  for  working  chiefly  in  wood, 
with  competent  mechanics  in  charge,  and  each  boy  should  have 
his  bench  here,  with  a  simple  set  of  the  necessary  tools.  There 
should  also  be  a  laboratory  for  physics,  and  one  for  chemistry, 
with  the  same  provisions.  The  institution  should  be  amply 
supplied  with  books,  but  none  should  be  put  into  the  hands  of 
the  boys  except  at  their  own  request,  and  upon  good  evidence 
that  they  desire  to  employ  them  as  helps  to  learning. 

The  boys  who  enter  this  school  are  presumed  to  be  able 
already  to  read  and  write.  The  purpose  of  the  school  itself  is 
to  acquaint  them  intimately  with  the  various  objects  which 
make  up  the  world  in  which  they  live.  Let  us  suppose  the 
first  subject  which  occupies  attention  to  be  the  vegetable 
kingdom.  Of  this  the  most  conspicuous  members  and  the 
most  easily  studied  are  the  trees,  and  it  will  therefore  be 
best  to  begin  with  them ;  and  here,  as  elsewhere  always,  the 
methods  of  study  will  be  entirely  practical.  No  time  will  be 
spent  in  talking  about  trees  —  that  is  to  say,  describing  them 
—  or  in  reading  about  trees,  or  in  looking  at  pictures  of  trees. 
The  boys  will  go  out  together  into  the  fields  and  woods  to  find 
the  trees,  and  to  study  them  where  they  stand.  A  large  part  of 
every  fair  day  will  accordingly  be  spent  in  the  open  air.  The 
boys  will  go  out  with  their  teacher,  each  being  provided  with 
pencils  and  tablets,  and  with  a  tin  case  suspended  from  the 
neck,  such  as  is  used  by  botanists  for  collecting  plants. 
There  should  be  a  hatchet  or  two  in  the  party,  and  a  work- 
man with  an  axe  should  be  in  attendance. 

When  the  party  is  once  afield,  the  first  question  asked  by 
the  teacher  should  be:  "Is  there  any  boy  here  present  who 
knows  any  particular  tree  when  he  sees  it?"  and  if  so,  he 
should  be  allowed  to  look  for  it  and  to  point  it  out.  Most 
boys  know  the  fruit  trees,  and  if  there  are  any  orchards  in  the 
neighborhood,  some  one  will  presently  discover  an  apple,  a 
peach,  a  plum,  or  a  pear.  He  should  then  be  required  to  state 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  441 

how  he  distinguishes  it,  whether  by  its  size,  its  general  form, 
its  leaf,  its  blossom,  —  if  in  the  season  of  bloom,  —  its  peculiari- 
ties of  ramification,  or  by  all  these  things  together.  Of  course 
if  the  fruit  is  present,  that  is  conclusive ;  but  the  other  charac- 
teristics ought  not,  therefore,  to  be  neglected.  If  there  are 
any  in  the  party  who  have  not  remarked  these  particulars 
before,  their  attention  will  be  thus  drawn  to  them,  and  the  boy 
becomes  thus  the  instructor  of  his  fellow-pupils.  Each  mem- 
ber of  the  party  will  then  be  called  on  to  make  with  his  tablets 
the  best  sketch  he  can  of  the  general  form  and  appearance  of 
the  tree.  The  drawings  will  probably  be  rude  and  inartistic, 
but  they  should  not  be  condemned  on  that  account.  Improve- 
ment will  come  with  time,  and  the  ambition  to  draw  well, 
which  will  soon  be  alive,  will  lead  individuals  to  ask  for  in- 
struction in  the  principles  and  practice  of  the  art.  But  the 
immediate  advantage  of  the  exercise  is  that  it  fastens  the 
attention  of  the  pupil  successively  upon  the  details  of  the  ob- 
ject, and  fixes  the  picture  of  it  in  his  mind  with  an  exactness 
it  would  not  otherwise  acquire.  Specimens  will  then  be  taken 
of  the  leaves  of  the  tree,  its  bark,  its  flowers,  or  fruit,  if  in 
season,  and  its  wood.  These  may  be  examined  on  the  spot, 
but  they  must  be  preserved  for  future  study  at  home,  and  in 
order  to  form  parts  of  a  permanent  collection  to  be  kept  by 
each  boy.  The  most  interesting  of  these  specimens  will  of 
course  be  the  flowers,  which,  though,  as  to  their  general 
appearance,  they  are  likely  to  be  known  to  most  boys,  yet 
as  to  the  peculiarities  of  their  structure,  will  never  probably 
have  been  the  subject  of  particular  observation.  It  will  be  the 
business  of  the  teacher  to  explain  this  structure,  pointing  out 
the  distinctive  organs  and  describing  their  functions  in  the 
fecundation  of  the  plant,  but  he  will  avoid  all  generalizations 
or  attempts  to  classify,  leaving  such  things  to  the  time  when 
the  multiplication  of  examples  shall  lead  the  pupil  himself  to 
perceive  the  analogies  which  indicate  unity  of  plan. 

The  study  of  one  tree  having  been  completed,  the  party  will 
proceed  to  another,  taking  always  by  choice  first  any  one  which 
may  be  identified  by  a  member  of  the  class.  The  fruit  trees, 
shade  trees,  and  ornamental  trees,  being  generally  familiar, 
will  thus  one  by  one  come  under  examination;  after  which, 


442  MEMOIRS   OF 

in  proceeding  to  the  forest,  it  may  become  necessary  for 
the  teacher  to  name  the  subject.  These  tree  studies  will 
occupy  many  days.  A  single  excursion  of  three  or  four  hours 
may  suffice  for  a  dayj  and,  in  the  beginning,  a  single  subject 
may  afford  ample  material  to  fill  up  the  time  of  an  excursion. 

After  the  return  to  the  school,  the  first  attention  should  be 
paid  to  the  specimens  gathered.  The  barks  should  be  laid 
away  in  trays  on  the  shelves  of  the  cabinets ;  the  leaves  and 
flowers  should  be  pressed  between  folds  of  bibulous  paper,  and 
after  being  sufficiently  dried,  should  be  secured  in  portfolios 
for  future  examination  and  comparison.  Specimens  of  the 
woods  should  also  be  prepared  by  the  boys  in  the  workshops, 
with  the  assistance,  if  necessary,  of  the  carpenters;  and  for 
this  purpose,  as  the  wood  in  its  green  state  is  not  easily 
wrought,  a  store  of  well-seasoned  logs  of  each  of  the  kinds 
of  trees  studied  should  be  kept  on  hand.  The  boys  should  be 
shown  the  green  and  dried  specimens  side  by  side,  that  they 
may  be  familiarized  with  the  effects  of  seasoning,  and  the 
specimens  prepared  for  their  cabinets  should  show  the  grain 
as  it  appears  in  sections  through  the  heart,  in  the  direction  of 
the  rings,  or  cut  across.  The  workshop  should  contain,  like- 
wise, many  specimens  of  sections  taken  from  the  trunks  of 
trees,  showing  the  rings  of  annual  growth  entire,  and  the  boys 
may  be  practised  in  determining  the  age  of  the  tree  by  count- 
ing these  rings. 

The  school-room  exercises  will  be  all  of  an  equally  practical 
kind.  The  boys  may  be  called  on  in  turn  to  draw  upon  the 
blackboard  outlines  of  trees,  leaves,  flowers,  or  fruits  for  iden- 
tification by  the  rest ;  or  the  teacher  may  present  from  his  own 
store,  specimens  of  wood,  bark,  leaves,  or  flowers  for  a  similar 
purpose.  As  the  taste  for  drawing  will  be  sure  to  grow  with 
exercise,  individuals  should  be  encouraged  to  prepare  at  their 
desks  more  elaborate  sketches  ;  and  in  this  their  inexperience 
may  be  aided  by  suggestions  from  the  teacher,  or  from  a  prac- 
tised drawing-master,  of  which  they  will  gladly  avail  them- 
selves. 

It  is  intended  in  these  hints  only  to  indicate  the  kind  of 
exercises  which  will  fill  up  the  indoor  hours,  and  not  to  con- 
struct an  exhaustive  scheme.  Moreover,  confinement  within 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNAKD  443 

doors,  except  in  inclement  weather,  should  not  be  so  protracted 
as  to  be  wearisome.  The  school  proper  may  be  relegated 
mainly  to  the  evening  hours,  and  during  the  day  the  boys 
should  have  ample  time  to  devote  to  athletic  sports  in  the 
open  air. 

The  description  of  the  study  of  the  trees  above  given  is  in- 
tended only  as  an  example  of  the  method.  After  this  class  of 
objects  has  been  exhausted,  the  same  method  will  of  course  be 
extended  to  the  shrubs,  the  vines,  the  great  variety  of  annual 
plants,  the  mosses,  and  the  fungi.  It  will  also  be  applied  to 
the  animal  kingdom,  beginning  with  the  larger  domestic  quad- 
rupeds, and  extending  to  wild  animals,  birds,  reptiles,  insects, 
and  the  lower  forms  of  life,  including  the  infusoria,  so  far  as 
specimens  are  accessible.  And  it  will  further  be  applied  to 
the  study  of  inorganic  nature,  excursions  being  planned  for 
that  purpose  into  regions  abounding  in  minerals  and  fossils, 
where  the  boys  may  use  their  hammers  and  stone  chisels,  and 
gather  great  store  of  interesting  specimens;  or  to  ravines, 
river  bluffs,  or  artificial  deep  cuts,  where  they  can  observe  the 
outcrop  of  the  strata,  and  mark  their  characteristic  differences. 
It  will  be  applied,  also,  to  the  study  of  the  earth's  surface,  with 
its  physical  features  and  its  artificial  divisions,  to  the  extent  to 
which  the  observation  of  the  pupils  in  their  various  excursions 
has  reached ;  thus  forming  an  intelligent  introduction  to  the 
study  of  geography.  Here  will  be  found  the  advantage  of 
occupying  a  position  commanding  an  extended  view.  Map- 
drawing  will  be  commenced  with  rough  plots  drawn  by  sight 
of  the  grounds  belonging  to  the  school  itself,  then  of  the  ad- 
jacent fields,  with  the  lines  of  fences,  highways,  watercourses, 
hill  ridges,  and  forest  borders,  so  far  as  they  can  be  seen. 
These  plots,  which  will  probably  be  disproportioned,  especially 
in  the  more  distant  parts,  may  afterwards  be  corrected  by 
visiting  the  doubtful  localities  for  the  purpose ;  and  they  may 
possibly  be  reduced  to  something  like  exactitude,  by  regular 
surveys  made  with  compass  and  chain,  an  operation  which  may 
be  prosecuted  at  intervals  through  a  period  of  some  weeks  or 
months. 

In  the  meantime,  as  the  knowledge  of  the  pupils  increases, 
they  will  become  aware  of  the  existence  of  objects  analogous  to 


444  MEMOIRS   OF 

those  which  they  have  studied,  but  which  are  beyond  the  reach 
of  their  own  observation ;  and  they  will  desire  to  learn  some- 
thing about  such,  especially  if  there  is  anything  abnormal 
or  otherwise  remarkable  about  them.  Thus,  when  trees  are 
the  subject  of  study,  they  will  hear  with  curious  interest  what- 
ever is  told  them  of  the  banyan,  the  sequoia,  the  olive,  or  the 
palm.  The  teacher's  instructions  on  the  subject  may  be  pleas- 
ingly illustrated  by  pictures  and  lantern  views.  The  result 
will  be  the  growth  of  such  a  craving  after  larger  sources  of 
information  as  books  only  can  satisfy ;  and  books  thus  yielded 
to  the  demand  of  the  learner,  instead  of  being  thrust  upon 
him  against  his  will,  will  be  held  by  their  possessor  in  an 
esteem  of  which  the  ordinary  school-boy  of  our  time,  plodding 
and  chiding  the  weary  hours  over  his  Greek  grammar  from 
day  to  day  and  from  week  to  week,  is  in  general  quite  incapa- 
ble of  forming  a  conception. 

In  conveying  a  knowledge  of  the  elements  of  experimental 
science,  though  some  modification  of  method  would  be  neces- 
sary, the  principle  would  remain  the  same.  The  work  would 
be  chiefly  indoors,  but  the  pupil  would  be  required  to  experi- 
ment for  himself.  He  would  need  to  be  told  what  to  look  for 
and  what  to  expect,  and  might  require  some  hints  as  to  the 
mode  of  proceeding ;  but  after  his  first  success,  he  would  get 
on  with  very  little  assistance.  The  problem  of  the  centre  of 
gravity,  for  example,  or  the  principles  governing  the  stability 
of  structures,  the  various  cases  of  equilibrium,  and  the  phenom- 
ena of  elasticity,  would  require  but  very  simple  apparatus  to 
enable  the  pupil  to  investigate  them  to  his  entire  contentment. 
And  so  of  other  things.  Here  the  demand  for  books  would 
soon  be  urgent.  There  is  no  department  of  human  inquiry  in 
which  the  youthful  experimenter  becomes  more  promptly  and 
completely  wrapped  up  than  that  which  relates  to  the  opera- 
tion of  the  forces  of  nature.  There  is  none  in  which  he  finds 
books  more  fascinating,  or  in  which  he  feels  a  more  eager 
ambition  to  add  some  discovery  of  his  own  to  what  he  finds  in 
books. 

Thus  the  system  of  training  of  juvenile  minds  here  described 
in  outline,  though  it  begins  by  discarding  the  use  of  printed 
aids  of  every  kind,  is  sure  to  end  in  producing  the  most  deeply 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  445 

interested  and  earnest  students  of  books.  It  constitutes  a 
regular  education  to  the  love  of  books,  while  that  which  is 
at  present  in  vogue  too  frequently  results  in  creating  an 
utter  detestation  of  the  same  objects.  When  we  have  pre- 
paratory schools  conducted  upon  principles  so  sensible  as 
these  —  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  the  time  is  not  very  far  distant 
when  we  shall  have  them  —  we  shall  have  a  class  of  young 
men  entering  college,  who  are  not  only  better  prepared  to 
profit  by  the  severer  course  of  study  before  them  than  those 
we  have  now,  but  also  without  doubt  better  versed  in  those 
very  languages  which  at  present  occupy  so  exclusively  all  the 
earlier  years ;  so  that,  with  their  greater  activity  of  intellect 
and  readiness  of  apprehension,  they  are  likely  to  be  able  in 
the  end,  as  so  few  of  our  graduates  are  at  present,  really  to 
read  the  Latin  and  Greek  fluently. 

In  the  foregoing  sketch  of  an  ideal  school,  one  point  is 
omitted  which  ought  not  to  pass  without  notice:  it  is  the 
place  of  the  modern  languages  in  the  plan,  and  the  manner 
of  teaching  them.  Their  place  is  everywhere,  and  the  manner 
of  teaching  wholly  colloquial.  The  teacher  will  begin  by 
giving  names,  in  the  foreign  tongue  which  may  be  chosen 
for  the  time,  to  all  the  visible  objects  around,  and  requiring 
the  pupils  to  give  them  back  to  him.  This  should  be  done 
not  in  the  manner  of  a  scholastic  exercise,  but  in  the  course 
of  ordinary  conversation,  as,  for  example,  while  the  class  are 
out  on  their  daily  excursions  in  search  of  knowledge.  He 
will  follow  this  up  by  asking  simple  questions  or  making 
simple  statements  about  the  objects,  both  in  English  and  in 
the  foreign  tongue,  which  the  pupils  will  repeat  after  him. 
He  will  return  frequently  to  the  same  questions,  till  they  are 
understood  without  the  necessity  of  using  the  English  equiva- 
lent. He  will  beware  of  pressing  this  exercise  too  fast.  He 
will  make  it  rather  a  matter  of  amusement,  and  will  content 
himself  if  in  the  course  of  some  weeks  he  is  successful  in 
fixing  in  the  memory  only  a  few  of  such  questions  with  their 
responses.  But  progress  in  the  natural  process  of  learning 
languages  is  like  the  growth  of  a  snow-ball  rolled  along  the 
ground  in  winter.  It  increases  at  first  slowly,  but  after  a 
little  time  it  takes  up  large  additions  to  its  bulk  at  every  turn. 


446  MEMOIRS   OF 

Some  simple  sentences  of  necessarily  frequent  use  will  soon 
become  familiar,  after  which  they  should  be  used  invariably, 
the  corresponding  forms  in  English  being  discarded.  The 
number  of  these  will  rapidly  grow,  and  the  substitution  of 
the  foreign  language  for  the  vernacular  altogether  for  ordinary 
conversation  between  pupil  and  teacher  and  between  the  pupils 
themselves  will  be  only  a  question  of  time.  The  entire  feasibil- 
ity of  this  plan  is  made  evident  by  the  success  of  a  much  more 
difficult  experiment  of  which  the  undersigned  has  been  the 
witness,  in  a  school  in  which  all  communication  between  pupil 
and  teacher  was  proscribed,  except  that  which  was  made  in 
Latin.  There  was  certainly  for  a  time  a  good  deal  of  study 
over  forms  of  speech,  and  occasionally  a  good  deal  of  use  of 
lexicons  before  speaking ;  and,  in  addition  to  this,  the  Latin 
was  not  always  the  best ;  but  there  grew  up,  nevertheless,  a 
very  intelligible  conversational  dialect,  which  improved  in 
elegance  as  time  went  on.  In  our  schools  as  at  present  con- 
ducted, this  mode  of  teaching  the  modern  languages  is  imprac- 
ticable, because  so  little  opportunity  is  afforded  in  them  for 
conversational  intercourse.  With  modern  and  with  ancient 
languages  the  plan  is  the  same ;  and  consists,  first,  of  solitary 
study  on  the  part  of  the  student,  and,  secondly,  of  grammati- 
cal drill  and  text-book  recitation  in  presence  of  the  instructor. 
It  is  capable  of  improvement  only  by  revolutionizing  the  whole 
system,  and  the  system  will  not  be  revolutionized  until  educa- 
tional methods  shall  cease  to  be  tolerated  which  cannot  be 
shown  to  be  in  harmony  with  the  principles  of  a  sound  phi- 
losophy. 

Dr.  Barnard  was  one  of  those  strenuous  men  whose  pro- 
fessional engagements  are  only  the  nucleus,  so  to  speak, 
of  far  larger  activities.  Before  his  election  to  the  Presi- 
dency of  Columbia  College  he  had  not  only  been  exten- 
sively engaged  in  mathematical  studies  and  original 
scientific  research,  but  he  had  made  substantial  contribu- 
tions to  the  literature  of  the  time.  As  early  as  1838,  he 
contributed  to  Silliman's  Journal  of  Science  an  ingenious 
and  interesting  paper  on  the  Aurora  Borealis,  which  was 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  447 

followed  by  other  contributions  to  the  same  journal ;  in 
1842,  on  An  Improvement  in  Photography  ;  in  1853,  on 
The  Theory  of  the  Hot  Air  Engine,  and  on  a  proposed 
Modification  of  Ericsson's  Engine;  in  1854,  a  series  of 
papers  on  The  Elastic  Force  of  Heated  Air ;  also  articles 
on  The  Comparative  Expenditure  of  Heat  and  Different 
Forms  of  the  Air  Engine,  and  on  The  Mechanical  Theory 
of  Heat ;  in  1856,  An  Examination  of  the  Theory  which 
Ascribes  the  Zodiacal  Light  to  a  Ring  Surrounding  the 
Earth;  in  1860,  on  The  Eclipse  Expedition  to  Cape 
Chudleigh,  Labrador ;  in  1863,  on  The  Hydraulics  of  the 
Mississippi,  and  on  The  Explosive  Force  of  Gunpowder. 

During  the  same  period  he  contributed  the  following 
valuable  papers  to  the  proceedings  of  the  American  Asso- 
ciation for  the  Advancement  of  Science :  in  1858,  on 
The  Pendulum,  with  a  Description  of  an  Electric  Clock, 
with  Pendulum  perfectly  Free;  in  1859,  on  The  Means 
of  Preserving  Electric  Contacts  from  Vitiation  by  the 
Sparks,  also  an  extended  Report  on  The  History,  Methods 
and  Results  of  the  American  Coast  Survey ;  in  1862,  on 
The  Mathematical  Principles  of  the  Undulatory  Theory 
of  Light. 

His  publications  on  educational  and  other  subjects,  so 
far  as  can  now  be  discovered,  included  the  following : 
in  1828,  an  Elementary  Arithmetic  ;  in  1831,  a  Revision 
of  Bridge's  "Conic  Sections";  in  1832-1837,  numerous 
papers  on  Deaf -Mute  Instruction;  in  1841,  an  oration 
on  The  Claims  of  Masonry,  which  attracted  much  atten- 
tion in  Alabama  and  secured  for  him  the  recognition  and 
support  of  influential  friends  ;  in  1849,  a  Defence  of  the 
"  Sons  of  Temperance,"  which  had  a  like  effect ;  in  1851, 
an  Oration  in  defence  of  the  Union,  of  which  a  condensed 
report  has  been  given  in  this  volume ;  in  1854,  a  Report 
on  Collegiate  Education  and  an  Essay  on  Art  Culture; 


448  MEMOIRS   OF 

in  1855,  Letters  on  College  Government  and  an  Essay  on 
Improvements  Practicable  in  American  Colleges  ;  in  1858, 
University  Education,  Relation  of  University  Education 
to  Common  Schools,  and  a  Letter  to  the  Board  of  Trus- 
tees of  the  University  of  Mississippi ;  in  1861,  a  paper  on 
Histological  Research  at  Home  and  Abroad;  in  1863,  a 
Letter  to  the  President  of  the  United  States  by  a  Refugee. 
During  the  period  of  his  Presidency  of  Columbia  Col- 
lege, his  Annual  Reports  to  the  Board  of  Trustees  con- 
tained nearly  every  year  a  discourse  on  some  topic  of 
far-reaching  educational  interest,  and  in  addition  to  this, 
his  literary  labors  were  enormous,  consisting  not  only 
of  contributions  to  the  periodicals  of  the  time,  but  also  of 
important  monographs  and  even  of  an  immense  work  of 
a  cyclopsedic  character.  The  list,  so  far  as  can  now  be 
discovered,  is  as  follows  :  in  1868,  an  Address  before  the 
American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science ; 
in  1869,  a  similar  Address  on  the  Recent  Progress  of 
Science  ;  in  1871,  contributions  to  Mr.  David  Dudley 
Field's  Outline  of  a  Code  of  National  Law  on  "  Money, 
Weights  and  Measures,  Longitude  and  Time,  and  Sea- 
Signals  "  ;  in  1872,  a  pamphlet  on  Modern  Industrial 
Progress;  in  1873,  a  bulletin  of  the  American  Metrological 
Society ;  in  1874,  a  pamphlet  on  International  Coinage ; 
in  1876,  two  articles  in  Harper's  Monthly  on  The  First 
Century  of  the  Republic  ;  in  1877,  a  brochure  on  a  New 
Electoral  System;  in  1879,  a  paper  on  The  Possibility 
of  an  Invariable  Standard  of  Value,  an  Address  at  the 
Commencement  of  the  University  of  the  State  of  New 
York,  Metrological  Notes,  contributed  to  the  American 
Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  and  a  paper 
on  Monometallism,  Bimetallism,  and  International  Coin- 
age ;  in  1880,  two  papers  on  Academic  Degrees ;  in  1882, 
a  paper  on  The  World's  Stock  of  Precious  Metals,  and 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  449 

a  pamphlet  entitled  "  Should  American  Colleges  be  Open 
to  Women  as  well  as  to  Men " ;  in  1884,  a  monograph 
on  the  Metrology  of  the  Great  Pyramid  in  which  he 
exploded  many  of  the  theories  of  Piazzi  Smyth  on  that 
subject ;  in  1885,  a  paper  on  Reform  Needed  in  the  Man- 
ner of  Conducting  Presidential  Elections ;  in  1886,  a 
Letter  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy;  in  1887,  Warfare 
against  Society ;  and  last  of  all  a  posthumous  article  pub- 
lished in  the  April  number  of  The  Forum,  1890,  on  The 
Degradation  of  our  Politics. 

In  1872,  Dr.  Barnard  undertook  his  Magnum  Opus  at 
the  request  of  Mr.  A.  J.  Johnson,  a  publisher  of  New 
York.  It  was  nothing  less  than  a  new  cyclopedia  on 
a  plan  originally  suggested  by  Horace  Greeley.  The 
editorship  of  this  work  had  been  first  entrusted  to  Dr. 
Joseph  Thomas  of  Philadelphia,  but  after  some  progress 
had  been  made,  Dr.  Thomas  retired,  and  the  publisher 
requested  President  Barnard  to  take  his  place.  After 
some  hesitation,  he  accepted  the  proposal,  but  only  on 
condition  that  the  work  should  be  again  taken  up  from 
the  beginning,  and  that  the  plates  already  prepared,  and 
amounting  to  more  than  eleven  hundred  in  number,  should 
be  destroyed.  Under  Dr.  Barnard's  editorship,  the  first 
volume  appeared  in  June,  1874,  and  the  fourth  and  last 
in  April,  1887.  The  four  volumes  included  seven  thou- 
sand pages  imperial  octavo,  closely  printed,  and  the  labor 
which  fell  upon  the  editor  was  heavy  indeed.  Though 
the  various  departments  were  committed  to  associate 
editors,  and  every  title  of  importance  was  treated  by 
some  writer  of  known  authority,  the  supervision  of  the 
whole  work  still  remained  to  the  editor-in-chief.  The 
correspondence  with  writers  and  sub-editors  was  enor- 
mous; he  himself  contributed  many  important  articles 
to  every  volume ;  and  he  was  constantly  engaged  in  the 
2o 


450  MEMOIRS   OF 

collation  and  condensation  of  facts  which  had  been  col- 
lected by  his  subordinates ;  but  although  the  four  years 
from  1873  to  1877  were  years  of  exhausting  toil,  he  had 
the  great  satisfaction  to  know  that  his  work  was  appre- 
ciated, not  less  than  fifty  thousand  copies  of  the  cyclo- 
pedia having  been  sold. 

Meanwhile,  his  attention  was  never  for  a  moment  with- 
drawn from  the  institution  of  which  he  was  the  head 
and  which  was  constantly  gaining  in  reputation  by  the 
acknowledged  distinction  of  its  President.  The  honors 
which  had  been  bestowed  upon  him  were  numerous. 
Earlier  in  his  career  he  had  received  the  degree  of 
Ph.D.;  he  was  admitted  to  the  degree  of  S.T.D.  by  the 
University  of  Mississippi,  to  that  of  LL.D.  by  his  Alma 
Mater  and  also  by  Jefferson  College,  Mississippi ;  to  that 
of  L.H.D.  by  the  University  Regents  of  the  State  of  New 
York;  to  that  of  D.C.L.  by  King's  College,  Canada  ;  and 
the  last-mentioned  degree  was  offered  to  him  and  would 
have  been  conferred  upon  him  by  the  University  of  Ox- 
ford, England,  if  he  had  not  been  hindered  from  arriving 
in  time  to  receive  it.  He  was  a  member  of  the  Connecti- 
cut Academy,  New  Haven,  of  the  American  Philosophical 
Society  of  Philadelphia,  of  the  Lyceum  of  Natural  His- 
tory, New  York,  and  of  the  American  Geographical 
Society.  He  succeeded  Professor  Agassiz  as  correspond- 
ing secretary  of  the  National  Academy  of  Sciences;  he 
was  an  associate  member  of  the  American  Academy  of 
Arts  and  Sciences ;  he  was  an  honorary  member  of  the 
Sociedade  Auxiliadora  da  Industria  Nacional  of  Brazil; 
he  was  a  corresponding  member  of  the  Royal  Society 
of  Liege,  Belgium ;  he  was  President  at  different  times 
of  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Science,  of  the  Microscopical  Society,  of  the  Board  of 
Experts  of  the  American  Bureau  of  Mines,  and  of  the 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  451 

American  Institute,  New  York.  By  appointment  of 
the  President  of  the  United  States,  he  had  been  a  Com- 
missioner to  the  Paris  Exposition  in  1867,  and  served  as 
chairman  of  the  Committees  on  Machinery  and  on  the 
Apparatus  of  the  Exact  Sciences,  also  as  a  juror  on  In- 
struments of  Precision  and  as  a  member  of  the  Advisory 
Committee.  His  services  in  these  capacities  were  hand- 
somely acknowledged  by  the  French  Government,  which 
conferred  upon  him  the  high  honor  of  an  Officer  of  the 
Legion  of  Honor.  In  1873,  he  was  again  appointed  by 
the  President  of  the  United  States  as  a  Commissioner  to 
the  International  Exposition  at  Vienna,  where  he  served 
as  a  member  of  the  Advisory  Committee  and  as  Chairman 
of  a  sub-committee  on  Instruments  of  Precision.  He  was 
fortunate  enough  to  live  to  join  in  the  celebration  of  the 
Centenary  of  the  re-establishment  of  King's  College  as 
Columbia  College  in  1887,  and  as  his  labors  ended  in  the 
following  year,  it  may  be  convenient  here  to  compare  the 
departments  of  instruction  in  the  College  as  they  were  in 
1865,  with  the  larger  and  broader  development  recorded 
by  the  reports  of  1887. 

In  1885,  the  Academic  Departments  appear  from  the 
published  catalogue  to  have  been  these : 

1.  The  Evidences  of  Natural  and  Revealed  Religion. 

2.  The  Greek  Language  and  Literature. 

3.  The  Latin  Language  and  Literature. 

4.  The  German  Language  and  Literature  (optional). 

5.  Chemistry. 

6.  History  and  Political  Science. 

7.  The  Higher  Mathematics. 

8.  Mathematics  and  Astronomy. 

9.  Philosophy  and  Belles-Lettres. 

10.  Mechanics  and  Physics. 

11.  Botany. 


452  MEMOIRS  OF 

The  Medical  School  and  Law  School  were  entirely 
separate  and  distinct  from  the  College,  and  the  School  of 
Mines  had  merely  been  projected. 

In  1887,  there  were  the  following  departments : 

SCHOOL  OF  ARTS. 

1.  Greek,  including  both  an  undergraduate  and  gradu- 
ate course. 

2.  Latin,  with  undergraduate  and  graduate  courses. 

3.  Mathematics,  Mechanics,  and  Astronomy,  with  elec- 
tive courses  for  undergraduates  in  Descriptive  Astronomy, 
Differential  and  Integral  Calculus,  Analytical  Geometry 
and   Mechanics,   and   with   graduate    instruction   in   the 
Higher  Mathematics,  Determinants,  and  Modern  Co-ordi- 
nate Geometry. 

4.  Mathematics,  undergraduate  and  graduate  classes. 

5.  Physics,  partly  elective. 

6.  History  and  Political  Science,  for  undergraduates. 

7.  Philosophy,  Ethics,  and  Psychology,  undergraduate 
and  graduate  courses,  also  a  graduate  seminar. 

8.  Political  Economy  and  Social  Science,  partly  elective. 

9.  English  Language  and  Literature,  for  graduates  and 
undergraduates,  with  special  studies  in  Anglo-Saxon. 

10.  Modern   Languages   and   Foreign   Literature,   for 
undergraduates  and  graduates. 

11.  Geodesy  and  Practical  Astronomy,  chiefly  for  grad- 
uates, but  partially  optional  to  the  senior  class. 

12.  Chemistry,  undergraduate  and  graduate  classes. 

13.  Geology  (in  the  School  of  Mines). 

14.  Botany. 

15.  Sanskrit  (optional  to  seniors  and  graduates). 

16.  Semitic    Languages,   for    graduates    (optional   to 
seniors). 

17.  Iranian    Languages,   for    graduates    (optional    to 
seniors). 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  453 

SCHOOL  OF  MINES. 

1.  Mineralogy  and  Metallurgy. 

2.  Chemistry. 

3.  Analytical  Chemistry. 

4.  Assaying. 

5.  Qualitative  Analysis. 

6.  Organic  Chemistry. 

7.  Chemical  Physics  and  Chemical  Philosophy. 

8.  Mechanics. 

9.  Mathematics. 

10.  Physics. 

11.  Engineering. 

12.  Architecture. 

13.  Biology  and  Hygiene. 

14.  Microscopy  and  Biology. 

15.  Geodesy  and  Practical  Astronomy. 

SCHOOL  OF  POLITICAL  SCIENCE. 

1.  Political  Economy  and  Social  Science. 

2.  European  Law. 

3.  Philosophy,  including  political  theories  from  Plate 
to  Bentham. 

SCHOOL  OF  LAW. 

Fully  organized  in  all  departments. 

SCHOOL  OF  MEDICINE. 
Fully  organized  in  all  departments. 

SCHOOL  OF  LIBRARY  ECONOMY. 

In  addition  to  these  regular  schools  and  courses,  there 
were  Summer  Schools  as  follows  : 

1.  In  Practical  Mining.       3.  In  Mechanical  Engineering. 

2.  In  Surveying.  4.  In  Practical  Geodesy. 


454  MEMOIRS   OF 

In  view  of  these  facts,  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
where  Dr.  Barnard  found  a  college  with  150  undergradu- 
ates, he  left  an  university  of  more  than  1000  students,  or, 
if  the  Medical  School  be  included,  of  nearly  2000  students. 
His  warmest  admirers  do  not  pretend  that  the  expansion 
of  the  institution  over  which  he  presided  was  exclusively 
the  result  of  his  personal  influence,  or  that  the  lines  of 
expansion  were  all  laid  on  plans  of  his  devising.  It  was 
his  good  fortune  to  be  called  to  Columbia  at  the  very 
time  when  a  venerable  institution  was  entering  upon  a 
period  of  growth  which  the  Board  of  Trustees  had  pa- 
tiently awaited,  and  for  which  the  Faculty  and  the  Trus- 
tees had  long  and  earnestly  labored.  It  was  Barnard's 
great  merit  that  he  appreciated  the  opportunity  of  the 
time  and  intelligently  fostered  a  development  for  which  the 
time  was  ripe.  In  a  man  so  positive  in  his  convictions  as 
Barnard  was,  it  was  a  rare  merit  to  be  able  and  willing  to 
abandon  any  and  all  theories,  however  earnestly  he  might 
have  advocated  them,  which  were  not  practically  appli- 
cable to  the  circumstances  of  the  institution  to  which  the 
remainder  of  his  life  was  to  be  devoted.  In  his  earlier 
years  he  had  thought  of  the  college  curriculum  merely 
as  a  preparation  for  serious  study.  He  now  saw  that  it 
must  be  made  in  some  worthy  degree  a  preparation  for 
the  duties  of  life.  He  had  regarded  the  college  as  an 
institution  separate  and  apart  from  all  other  schools  of 
learning ;  he  now  saw  that  unless  the  college  could  be 
brought  into  sympathetic  cooperation  with  a  far  larger 
scheme  of  instruction,  the  college  must  lose  its  place  in 
popular  esteem.  For  the  narrow  rigidity  of  the  college 
curriculum  which  he  had  once  approved,  he  came  to  see 
that  breadth  and  flexibility  must  be  substituted.  Con- 
sidering the  college  as  the  normal  foundation  of  a  truly 
liberal  education,  and  finding,  as  he  thought,  that  an 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BARNARD  455 

enthusiastic  esprit  du  corps  of  the  undergraduate  body  can- 
not be  maintained  without  something  of  the  community 
life  of  the  mediaeval  college,  he  expressed  his  willingness 
to  concur  in  the  inauguration  of  a  dormitory  system  which 
he  had  once  so  vehemently  condemned.  He  never  lost 
sight  of  the  fact  that  the  college  is  preparatory  to  the 
university ;  but  he  clearly  saw  that  an  American  univer- 
sity in  the  nineteenth  century,  and  still  more  in  the  twen- 
tieth, must  be  generically  different  from  the  European 
university  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  could  not  be  an  uni- 
versity in  the  sense  of  a  community  (universitas)  of 
teachers  and  scholars.  It  must  be  made  a  universitas 
omnium  scientiarum,  a  school  of  all  learning  that  the 
necessities  of  the  age  demand.  In  order  to  create  such 
an  institution,  special  schools  must  be  successively  founded 
as  they  seem  to  be  required,  for  the  instruction  of  gradu- 
ates of  the  college,  and  in  the  growth  of  these  schools  he 
believed  that  the  university  of  the  future  would  be  gradu- 
ally but  surely  developed.  As  the  graduate  schools  were 
successively  established,  he  began  at  last  to  entertain  the 
thought  that  it  might  even  be  desirable  for  Columbia 
to  abandon  the  department  of  college  instruction  to  the 
many  new  institutions  which  had  come  into  existence, 
and  to  devote  the  entire  resources  and  energies  at  the 
command  of  the  Board  to  the  fostering  and  enlargement 
of  the  university  proper.  But  by  the  university  proper 
Dr.  Barnard  no  longer  understood  an  institution  of  in- 
struction in  what  have  been  called  the  learned  profes- 
sions. The  necessities  of  the  age  and  the  logic  of  events 
require  that  a  modern  university,  and  especially  an  Amer- 
ican university,  shall  include  the  broadest  and  most  liberal 
courses  of  instruction  in  the  physical  arts  and  sciences, 
and  it  was  the  delight  of  his  life  to  observe  and  assist  in 
the  development  of  that  noble  polytechnic  school  which, 


456  MEMOIRS   OF 

somewhat  unfortunately,  is  known  by  the  name  of  one 
of  its  departments  as  the  School  of  Mines.  His  earnest 
advocacy  of  the  elective  system,  in  opposition  to  all  his 
earlier  prejudices,  was  grounded  in  his  desire  that  the 
college  curriculum  should  be  available  in  the  preparation 
of  students  for  scientific  pursuits,  as  well  as  for  students 
of  the  so-called  learned  professions.  He  warmly  de- 
nounced the  "overloading"  of  the  college  curriculum 
with  a  vast  array  of  studies,  the  effect  of  which  was  to 
give  the  student  a  mere  smattering  of  knowledge  on  many 
subjects,  without  adequate  preparation  for  an  advanced 
course  either  on  the  scientific  or  the  intellectual  side.  It 
does  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to  him  that  the  elective 
system  may  overload  the  collegiate  department  in  another 
way  by  endeavoring  to  make  a  single  institution  do  the 
work  which  is  done  in  Germany  by  the  two  separate 
institutions  of  the  Gymnasium  and  the  Real-Schule. 
That  is  a  question  which  still  remains  to  be  practically 
worked  out  by  American  educators  ;  and  it  is  more  than 
possible  that  experience  may  lead  them  to  adopt  the  Ger- 
man system.  To  Dr.  Barnard,  however,  that  question, 
if  he  ever  thought  of  it,  was  not  a  practical  question. 
He  had  only  the  college  to  work  with,  and  his  endeavor 
was  to  make  it  answer  the  purpose  both  of  the  Gymna- 
sium and  of  the  Real-Schule,  leaving  problems  which 
might  arise  in  other  times  to  be  studied  and  solved  by 
other  men. 

At  last  his  long  and  laborious  life  drew  to  its  close. 
In  the  year  following  the  Centenary  Celebration  of  1887, 
his  brief  Report  ended  with  a  few  remarks  which  he 
modestly  described  as  "apologetic."  He  said: 

The  conditions  under  which  the  present  report  has  been 
prepared  have  been  such  as  to  make  it  impossible  to  bestow 
upon  it  the  usual  amount  of  labor  and  time.  The  health  of 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  457 

the  undersigned  has  for  two  or  three  months  been  so  fluctuat- 
ing that  he  is  conscious  of  having  been  able  to  give  but  a 
superficial  survey  of  the  work  of  the  present  year.  The 
matters  of  most  essential  importance,  however,  have  been 
brought  to  the  attention  of  the  Board ;  and  if  there  has  been 
any  important  omission,  he  will  be  happy  to  furnish  any 
supplementary  information  which  may  be  called  for.  The 
undersigned  has  held  his  office  nearly  quarter  of  a  century  and 
has  served  a  term  exceeding  in  length  that  of  any  of  his 
predecessors.  The  period  has  been  marked  by  a  great  develop- 
ment in  the  work  of  the  institution.  .  .  .  Whatever  his 
relations  to  the  College  may  continue  to  be,  he  will  never  cease 
to  cherish  a  deep  interest  in  all  that  relates  to  it,  nor  to  bestow 
his  best  efforts  for  the  increase  of  its  prosperity  and  use- 
fulness. 

The  following  transcript  from  the  minutes  of  the  Board 
of  Trustees  records  the  action  taken  upon  Dr.  Barnard's 
resignation  in  terms  of  generous  justice  which  are  not  less 
honorable  to  the  Board  than  to  the  distinguished  man 
whose  long-continued  services  they  acknowledge  : 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Trustees  of  Columbia  College,  held  May 
7th,  1888,  the  chairman  presented  the  following  communication 
from  Dr.  Barnard,  tendering  his  resignation  as  President  of 
the  College : 

COLUMBIA  COLLEGE,  NEW  YORK. 

President's  Boom,  May  7th,  1888. 
To  THE  TRUSTEES  OF  COLUMBIA  COLLEGE: 

Advancing  years  and  unstable  health  admonish  me  that  the 
time  has  arrived  when  I  may  with  propriety  divest  myself  of 
the  responsibilities  which  you  did  me  the  honor  to  entrust  to 
me  many  years  ago,  and  which  I  have  uninterruptedly  contin- 
ued to  discharge  for  almost  a  quarter  of  a  century. 

I  beg  leave,  therefore,  to  resign  into  your  hands  the  office 
of  President  of  Columbia  College,  this  resignation  to  take  effect 
whenever  you  have  elected  a  successor  to  relieve  me  of  my 
burdens. 


458  MEMOIKS   OF 

I  do  not  conceal  that  this  action  is  taken  with  reluctance 
and  pain.  Many  circumstances  conspire  to  dissuade  me  from 
it,  and  I  am  impelled  to  it  only  by  a  sense  of  duty.  The  work 
in  which  I  have  been  so  long  engaged  is  congenial  to  me,  and 
has  constituted  a  pleasure  rather  than  a  task. 

The  numerous  colleagues  with  whom  I  have  been  associated 
have  manifested  toward  me  the  most  kindly  feeling,  and  have 
greatly  aided  to  relieve  me  of  the  sense  of  my  responsibilities. 
The  young  men,  in  the  various  departments  subject  to  my 
general  control,  have  manifested  a  spirit  of  devotion  to  the 
objects  for  which  they  are  here  assembled,  such  as  to  render 
the  care  I  have  been  obliged  to  bestow  upon  them  a  pleasurable 
occupation.  And  to  the  members  of  your  honorable  body  I 
have  been  indebted  for  kind  consideration  of  my  shortcomings, 
and  for  a  generous  support  in  my  efforts  to  serve  you,  which 
have  contributed  largely  to  make  my  post  agreeable.  Though 
disconnected  from  the  College,  I  shall  not  cease  to  take  an  in- 
terest in  its  affairs,  nor  fail  to  use  my  best  efforts,  so  long  as 
life  shall  last,  to  advance  in  every  manner  in  my  power  its 
prosperity  and  its  usefulness. 

I  have  the  honor  to  be, 

Very  respectfully  yours, 

F.  A.  P.  BARNARD. 
And  it  was 

Resolved :  That  the  communication  be  referred  to  a  special 
committee  of  five  to  consider  and  report  what  action  should 
be  taken  in  the  matter. 

The  Chair  appointed  as  such  special  committee,  —  the  Eev. 
Dr.  Dix,  Mr.  W.  C.  Schermerhorn,  Mr.  Stephen  P.  Nash,  Mr. 
Joseph  W.  Harper,  and  Mr.  Gerard  Beekman. 


At  a  meeting  of  the  Trustees  of  Columbia  College,  held 
June  4th,  1888,  the  special  committee,  to  whom  the  President's 
resignation  was  referred,  presented  the  following  report,  which 
was  accepted,  and  the  resolutions  therein  recommended  were 
adopted : 

The  special  committee,  to  whom  was  referred  a  letter  from 
the  President  of  the  College,  dated  May  7th,  and  received  by 


FEEDEKICK  A.   P.   BARNAUD  459 

the  Board  at  the  meeting  held  on  that  day,  with  instructions 
to  consider  the  said  communication  and  report  what  action 
should  be  taken  by  the  Board  in  consequence,  respectfully  re- 
port as  follows : 

The  letter  referred  to  contains  the  President's  resignation  of 
his  office,  the  said  resignation  to  take  effect  on  the  election  of 
his  successor.  The  President  states  that  he  is  constrained  to 
take  this  step  in  consequence  of  failure  of  health,  and  the 
burden  of  advancing  years,  which  render  it  desirable  and  nec- 
essary that  he  should  obtain  relief  from  the  heavy  cares  and 
responsibilities  of  his  office.  Your  Committee,  with  profound 
regret,  find  themselves  compelled  to  admit  the  urgent  neces- 
sity of  the  case  as  thus  presented,  and  see  no  escape  from  the 
conclusion  that  the  resignation  of  Dr.  Barnard  ought  to  be 
accepted,  and  that  steps  should  be  promptly  taken  to  give  him 
the  relief  requested  by  the  election  of  a  successor.  They 
would,  however,  consider  it  a  gratifying  result  if  the  difficul- 
ties attending  that  duty,  and  the  President's  improvement  in 
health,  should  conduce  to  his  continuing  in  office  until  the 
completion  of  the  twenty-fifth  year  of  his  incumbency. 

The  Committee  are  of  the  opinion,  that  in  view  of  the  long 
and  very  able  services  of  the  President,  and  of  the  causes  which 
now  compel  him,  amid  general  expressions  of  regret,  to  take 
the  preliminary  steps  towards  laying  down  his  office,  this  Board 
should  not  only  do  him  honor  in  every  suitable  way,  but  also, 
when  the  proper  time  arrives,  provide  for  him  during  the  re- 
mainder of  his  life,  and  they  have  accordingly  drafted  a  series 
of  resolutions,  expressive  of  their  judgment  as  to  the  course 
proper  to  be  pursued  at  this  time,  which  resolutions  they  now 
respectfully  submit  for  the  consideration  of  the  Board. 

Whereas,  at  a  meeting  of  the  Board  of  Trustees  of  Columbia 
College,  held  May  7th,  1888,  a  letter  was  received  from  the 
Rev'd  F.  A.  P.  Barnard,  S.T.D.,  LL.D.,  L.H.D.,  resigning  into 
their  hands  the  office  of  President  of  Columbia  College,  the 
said  resignation  to  take  effect  whenever  a  successor  shall  have 
been  elected ;  and 

Whereas,  the  cause  assigned  by  Dr.  Barnard  for  his  resig- 
nation is  the  heavy  burden  of  advancing  years  and  unstable 
health  which  renders  it  desirable  and  necessary  for  him  to 


460  MEMOIRS   OF 

divest  himself  of  the  responsibility  and  cares  of  his  office; 
therefore,  be  it 

Resolved:  That  the  Trustees  of  Columbia  College  have  re- 
ceived with  deep  emotion  and  inexpressible  regret  the  resig- 
nation of  the  venerable  and  illustrious  head  of  the  College. 

Resolved:  That  this  Board  offer  to  the  respected  and  hon- 
ored President  of  the  College  the  expression  of  their  sympa- 
thy with  him  in  the  impaired  condition  of  his  health  referred 
to  in  his  letter,  and  solely  under  essential  constraint,  and  most 
reluctantly,  accept  the  said  resignation  on  the  condition  under 
which  it  is  now  placed  in  their  hands. 

Resolved:  That  this  Board  attest  with  pride  and  pleasure 
the  widespread  fame  of  the  distinguished  head  of  the  College, 
and  share  in  the  general  admiration  for  his  extraordinary 
attainments,  his  ability  as  an  educator,  and  the  modesty,  sim- 
plicity, and  dignity  which  have  uniformly  characterized  his 
manners  and  life,  for  all  of  which  things  he  will  be  held  in 
perpetual  memory  by  the  learned  and  the  good  of  all  time  to 
come. 

Resolved:  That  we  recall  with  satisfaction  the  kindly  and 
courteous  relations  which  have  always  existed  between  our- 
selves and  President  Barnard  as  members  of  this  Board  of 
Trustees. 

Resolved :  That  when  the  time  comes  to  install  his  successor, 
the  Board  confer  on  the  retiring  President  the  rank  and  title 
of  President  Emeritus,  and  that  his  present  salary  be  continued 
during  the  remainder  of  his  life. 

Resolved :  That  with  a  view  of  securing  to  the  President  a 
full  measure  of  relief  from  his  duties  and  responsibilities  as 
President  and  Trustee,  we  hereby  grant  to  him  leave  of  absence 
for  one  year  from  this  date,  or  until  the  election  and  instal- 
lation of  his  successor,  pending  which  event  the  duties  of  his 
office  as  President  shall  be  performed  by  the  senior  Professor 
in  the  School  of  Arts  who  shall  be  in  the  regular  performance 
of  his  duties. 

Resolved:  That  a  copy  of  this  preamble  and  the  appended 
resolutions  be  engrossed  and  presented  to  President  Barnard 
by  a  select  committee  of  three  to  be  designated  by  the  Chair- 
man of  this  Board. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  461 

The  Chair  appointed  as  such  Committee  Dr.  Dix,  Mr.  Nash, 
and  Mr.  Harper. 

To  a  man  of  Dr.  Barnard's  temperament,  the  end  of 
labor  was  the  end  of  life.  He  lived  less  than  one  year 
after  the  acceptance  of  his  resignation,  and  passed  peace- 
fully and  painlessly  away  at  his  residence  on  the  College 
grounds,  April  27,  1889,  at  the  full  age  of  nearly  four 
score  years.  During  the  brief  time  of  his  retirement 
from  active  work,  he  was  cheered  and  strengthened  by 
innumerable  letters  of  loving  gratitude  and  admiration 
from  men  with  whom  he  had  been  associated  or  who  had 
had  the  privilege  of  studying  under  him  ;  but  his  delight 
was  to  spend  his  hours  of  quiet  in  conversing  with  his 
wife  on  the  events  of  bygone  years.  It  was  at  this  time 
that,  in  writing  of  her,  he  said :  "  To  the  encouragement 
derived  from  her  good  sense,  energy,  and  sanguine  tem- 
perament I  am  largely  indebted  for  whatever  success  may 
have  attended  me  in  life."  It  was  at  her  suggestion  that 
he  then  wrote  or  dictated  the  memoranda  of  his  career 
from  which  a  large  part  of  the  contents  of  this  volume 
have  been  derived;  and  so,  in  pleasing  recollections  of 
a  well-spent  life  and  in  constant  converse  with  her  whom 
he  loved  best  in  all  the  world,  "with  the  testimony  of 
a  good  conscience,  in  the  communion  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  in  the  confidence  of  a  certain  faith,  and  in  the 
comfort  of  a  reasonable  religious  and  holy  hope,"  Fred- 
erick Augustus  Porter  Barnard  "fell  on  sleep." 

It  was  nearly  fifty  years  since  he  had  been  confirmed 
in  old  St.  Thomas'  Church,  and  on  May  2d,  1889,  his 
funeral  took  place  from  the  new  and  noble  edifice  of  the 
same  parish.  The  Presidents  of  Harvard,  Yale,  Prince- 
ton, the  College  of  the  City  of  New  York,  Rutgers, 
Dartmouth,  Bates,  Hobart,  Trinity,  and  others,  were 


462  MEMOIRS   OF 

present  to  testify  the  respect  of  those  great  institutions. 
Deputations  from  many  churches  and  organizations  of 
learning,  literature,  and  science  were  in  attendance. 
The  Trustees,  Faculties,  students,  and  many  of  the  alumni 
of  Columbia  College  went  in  a  body  from  the  President's 
dwelling  to  the  church.  President  Dwight  of  Yale, 
President  Patton  of  Princeton,  President  Potter  of  Hobart, 
President  Webb  of  the  College  of  the  City  of  New  York, 
Dean  Hoffman  of  the  General  Theological  Seminary,  Dr. 
John  Hall,  the  Hon.  Hamilton  Fish,  William  C.  Schermer- 
horn,  and  Stephen  P.  Nash  bore  the  pall.  The  services 
were  conducted  by  the  Rt.  Rev.  Bishop  Potter,  assisted 
by  Dr.  Dix,  Dr.  Duffie,  Dr.  Brown,  and  Dr.  Starr.  In 
the  afternoon  of  the  same  day  the  remains  were  taken 
to  Sheffield,  Massachusetts,  where,  on  the  following  day, 
they  were  committed  to  their  final  resting-place. 

When  Dr.  Barnard's  will  was  read,  it  was  found  that 
in  death,  as  in  life,  his  heart  had  been  with  Columbia  Col- 
lege. The  income  of  his  estate  was  to  be  enjoyed  by  Mrs. 
Barnard  during  her  lifetime,  and  at  her  death  it  was  to 
pass  to  Columbia  College,  with  the  exception  of  certain 
small  legacies  to  friends  and  dependents.  The  following 
provisions  of  his  will  may  well  be  given  entire  : 

1.  One  portion  of  the  said  fund,  to  the  amount  of  ten  thou- 
sand dollars,  to  be  set  apart  and  to  constitute  the  foundation 
of  a  fellowship  to  be  entitled  "  The  Barnard  Fellowship  for 
Encouraging  Scientific  Research  "  ;  the  annual  income  from  the 
sum  so  set  apart  to  be  devoted  to  the  support  or  partial  support 
of  some  Alumnus  of  the  School  of  Arts,  or  of  the  School  of 
Science  known  as  the  School  of  Mines  of  Columbia  College, 
who  may  be  recommended  to  the  Trustees  by  the  joint  vote 
of  the  Faculties  of  the  said  schools,  as  evincing  decided 
aptness  for  physical  investigation,  and  who  may  be  disposed 
to  devote  himself  to  such  investigation  for  some  years  continu- 
ously, such  benefit  to  be  allowed  so  long  as  the  appointee  shall 


FREDERICK   A.   P.    BARNARD  463 

faithfully  fulfil  the  conditions  of  his  appointment,  or  during 
the  pleasure  of  the  Board,  who  may  always  annul  the  appoint- 
ment for  just  cause,  and  who  also,  on  the  occurrence  of  a 
vacancy  by  removal,  resignation,  or  death  of  the  incumbent, 
shall  proceed  to  make  a  new  appointment  so  early  as  may 
be  convenient,  on  nominations  by  the  Faculties  above  speci- 
fied; but  the  Trustees  may  make  appointments  under  this 
provision  of  my  will,  for  limited  instead  of  unlimited  peri- 
ods, if,  in  their  judgment,  the  object  of  the  provision  may, 
by  such  form  of  appointment,  be  likely  to  be  most  effectually 
secured. 

2.  All  the  remainder  of  my  property  invested  as  aforesaid, 
to  constitute  a  fund,  under  the  name  of  "  The  Barnard  Fund 
for  the  Increase  of  the  Library  " ;  the  income  from  the  same  to 
be  devoted  to  the  purchase,  on  account  of  the  library  of 
Columbia  College,  of  such  books  as  from  time  to  time  may 
be  most  needed,  but  especially  relating  to  physical  or  astro- 
nomical science ;  selecting,  in  preference,  those  which  may  be 
likely  to  be  most  useful  to  persons  engaged  in  scientific 
investigation.  But  of  the  income  from  this  said  fund  I  desire 
that  so  much  as  may  be  necessary  shall  be  applied  in  the 
manner  following:  The  Trustees  of  Columbia  College  shall 
cause  to  be  struck,  with  suitable  devices,  a  medal  of  gold, 
nine-tenths  fine,  of  the  bullion  value  of  not  less  than  two 
hundred  dollars,  to  be  styled  "  The  Barnard  Medal  for  Meri- 
torious Service  to  Science,"  and  shall  publicly  announce 
that  a  copy  of  the  same  shall  be  awarded,  at  the  close  of 
every  quinquennial  period,  dating  from  the  probate  of  this, 
my  last  will  and  testament,  to  such  person,  whether  a  citizen 
of  the  United  States  or  of  any  other  country,  as  shall,  within 
the  five  years  next  proceeding,  have  made  such  discovery  in 
physical  or  astronomical  science,  or  such  novel  application  of 
science  to  purposes  beneficial  to  the  human  race,  as,  in  the 
judgment  of  the  National  Academy  of  Sciences  of  the  United 
States,  shall  be  esteemed  most  worthy  of  such  honor. 

And  I  make  it  my  request  that  the  said  National  Academy 
of  Sciences  shall  charge  itself  with  the  duty  of  declaring  to 
the  Trustees  of  Columbia  College  aforesaid,  at  the  close  of 
every  term  of  five  years,  as  above  defined,  the  name  of  the 


464  MEMOIRS   OF 

person  whom  they  judge  worthy  to  receive  such  medal,  with 
a  statement  of  the  reasons  on  which  their  judgment  is  founded ; 
and  that,  upon  such  declaration  and  nomination,  the  Trustees 
shall  proceed  to  award  the  said  medal,  and  shall  transmit  the 
same  to  the  person  entitled  to  receive  it,  accompanied  by  a 
diploma  or  certificate  attesting  the  fact  and  the  occasion  of  the 
award.  But  if  the  said  National  Academy  of  Sciences  shall 
judge  that,  during  the  five  years  preceding  the  date  at  which, 
as  above  specified,  this  award  shall  become  due,  no  discovery 
in  physical  or  astronomical  science,  or  no  new  application  of 
scientific  principles  to  useful  purposes,  has  been  made  worthy 
of  the  distinction  proposed,  then  it  is  my  wish  and  request 
that  the  award  shall  be  for  that  time  omitted. 

And  I  would  further  desire  that  the  medal  above  described 
should  bear,  if  it  can  be  accomplished  without  interfering  with 
the  appropriate  artistic  devices,  upon  its  obverse  side  the  motto, 
Magna  est  Veritas,  and  upon  its  reverse  the  motto,  Deo  Optimo 
Maximo,  Gloria  in  Excelsis. 

Finally,  it  is  my  wish  that  in  case  the  fund  herein  last 
named  shall,  at  the  time  of  its  reversion  to  the  Trustees  of 
Columbia  College,  be  less  in  amount  than  the  sum  of  $50,000, 
the  income  from  the  same  shall,  for  the  time  being,  be  not 
applied  to  the  purchase  of  books,  but  shall  be  annually  added 
to  the  principal  until  the  total  sum  shall  reach  this  said 
amount  of  $50,000 ;  and  so  far  as  I  may  legally  do  so,  I  enjoin 
such  accumulation  upon  the  Trustees,  but  this  restriction  is  not 
intended  to  prevent  the  employment  of  so  much  of  said  income 
as  may  be  necessary  to  carry  into  effect  the  last  foregoing  pro- 
vision of  this,  my  last  will,  in  regard  to  the  preparation  and 
quinquennial  presentation  of  a  medal  for  meritorious  service 
to  science  to  some  suitable  person  nominated  by  the  National 
Academy  of  Sciences. 

Of  the  many  tributes  of  affectionate  admiration  which 
were  publicly  paid  to  the  memory  of  Dr.  Barnard,  it  may 
suffice  to  insert  in  this  place  the  two  which  he  himself 
would  have  valued  most  highly.  They  are  a  Minute 
adopted  by  the  Trustees  of  Columbia  College,  and  a 
similar  Minute  of  the  Alumni. 


FREDERICK  A.   P.   BARNARD  465 

EXTRACT  FROM  MINUTES  OF  MEETING  OF  THE  TRUSTEES 
OF  COLUMBIA  COLLEGE  HELD  JUNE  SED,   1889. 

On  motion  of  Dr.  Dix  and  by  unanimous  consent  the 
Rules  of  Order  were  suspended.  Dr.  Dix,  on  behalf  of 
the  Special  Committee,  appointed  May  6th,  1889,  pre- 
sented the  following  Minute  on  the  death  of  President 
Barnard,  which  was  accepted.  The  Committee  appointed 
at  the  last  meeting  of  the  Board  of  Trustees  of  Columbia 
College,  to  prepare  a  minute  on  the  death  of  President 
Barnard,  beg  leave  to  submit  the  following,  with  the 
recommendation  that  an  engrossed  copy  thereof  be  pre- 
sented to  Mrs.  Barnard: 

MINUTE. 

At  the  last  meeting  of  the  Trustees  of  Columbia  College,  the 
Chairman  of  the  Board  announced  the  death  of  the  venerable 
head  of  the  College,  the  Rev.  Frederick  Augustus  Porter  Bar- 
nard, Ph.D.,  S.T.D.,  LL.D.,  L.H.D.,  D.C.L.  It  is  just  one  year 
since  the  Trustees,  with  unfeigned  regret,  acceded  to  the  request 
of  our  respected  and  honored  President  and  Fellow  Trustee, 
to  be  relieved  from  the  cares  and  duties  of  the  offices  which 
he  has  filled  so  usefully  and  with  such  distinguished  success 
for  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century,  during  which  period  it  was 
his  privilege  and  ours  to  witness  the  unparalleled  growth  and 
development  of  the  College. 

The  Board  at  that  time  recorded  upon  their  minutes,  their 
recognition  of  the  high  character  and  valuable  services  of  Presi- 
dent Barnard.  Now,  having  received  the  announcement  of  his 
death,  they  desire  reverently  to  renew  the  expression  of  their 
admiration  and  respect  for  the  late  distinguished  Head  of  our 
College,  and  to  reaffirm  their  pleasant  memory  of  the  kindly 
and  courteous  relations  which  have  always  existed  between 
ourselves  and  President  Barnard  as  members  of  this  Board  of 
Trustees. 

He  was  a  man  of  eminent  ability  and  extensive  attainments, 
and  conspicuous  in  his  generation  for  a  life-long  devotion  to 
science  and  letters.  He  had  a  great  and  intelligent  interest 


466  MEMOIRS   OF 

in  whatever  related  to  education,  and  that  interest  grew  with 
advancing  years. 

For  a  quarter  of  a  century  he  was  at  the  head  of  Columbia 
College,  a  position  for  which  he  was  particularly  well  fitted, 
not  only  by  his  learning  and  acuteness,  but  also  by  his  execu- 
tive tact,  his  mastery  of  details,  his  insight  into  character,  and 
his  unfailing  courtesy  at  all  times  and  to  all  persons.  His 
devotion  to  the  welfare  and  advancement  of  the  College  was 
unsparing.  During  his  presidency,  the  gradual  increase  of 
means  at  its  command  led  to  a  wide  expansion  of  its  efforts 
and  methods  in  the  various  schools  now  under  the  care  of  this 
Board.  Dr.  Barnard's  capacious  intellect  and  broad  culture 
enabled  him  to  superintend  this  development  with  wisdom  and 
skill.  His  own  forte  lay  in  certain  branches  of  the  higher 
mathematics,  but  his  unsurpassed  eminence  here  in  no  wise 
lessened  his  interest  in  any  other  branch  of  a  liberal  educa- 
tion. His  outlook  took  in  the  whole  circle  of  human  knowl- 
edge so  far  as  that  could  be  embraced  in  the  curriculum  of  a 
single  institution.  He  was  equally  a  friend  to  the  humanities, 
the  exact  sciences,  philosophy,  jurisprudence,  and  every  depart- 
ment of  physical  research.  This  largeness  of  view  and  lofti- 
ness of  aim  have  set  a  precedent  which  we  trust  will  continue 
to  the  end. 

Dr.  Barnard  has  rendered  a  service  not  given  to  many  of  the 
sons  of  men  to  perform,  and  now  that  in  a  good  old  age  he  has 
terminated  his  useful  life  and  is  at  rest  from  toil,  his  associates 
in  the  Board  feel  it  alike  a  duty  and  a  privilege  to  pay  this 
tribute  to  his  memory.  June  3rd,  1889. 

MORGAN  Dix, 
JOSEPH  W.  HARPER, 
TALBOT  W.  CHAMBERS. 

EXTRACT  FROM  THE  MINUTES  OF  THE  ALUMNI. 

The  Alumni  of  Columbia  College,  desirous  of  expressing 
their  sense  of  the  eminent  services  to  their  Alma  Mater 
rendered  by  the  late  President  Barnard  and  of  the  great 
loss  sustained  by  her  in  his  lamented  death,  direct  the 
following  entry  to  be  made  in  the  minutes  of  this  meeting: 


FREDERICK   A.   P.   BARNARD  467 

In  1864  at  the  date  of  Dr.  Barnard's  accession  to  the  presi- 
dency, the  College  was  at  a  critical  period  of  its  history.  It 
was  ready  for  development  and  had  begun  to  develop.  The 
Law  School  had  been  established  a  few  years  previously  and 
was  in  successful  operation.  The  School  of  Mines  was  in 
process  of  organization.  The  Trustees  had  for  several  years 
been  considering  the  expansion  of  the  undergraduate  course, 
and  in  connection  therewith  a  system  of  university  education. 
At  this  critical  period  the  College  happily  obtained  as  its  chief 
counsellor  and  guide  Dr.  Barnard,  a  profound  student  of  educa- 
tion, in  sympathy  with  all  the  forms  of  higher  development, 
literary  as  well  as  scientific,  of  quick  perception,  peculiarly 
open  to  new  ideas  and  prolific  of  them,  of  learning  deep,  exact, 
and  extensive  in  many  fields,  a  classical  and  English  scholar, 
a  fine  mathematician,  physicist,  chemist,  and  adding  to  his 
severer  accomplishments  that  of  being  a  poet  and  a  musician 
of  no  mean  quality,  a  prolific,  elegant,  and  persuasive  writer, 
a  logical  and  convincing  speaker,  of  sanguine  enthusiastic 
temperament,  bold  and  persistent  in  the  advocacy  of  his  opin- 
ions, and  impervious  to  discouragement.  He  quickened  into 
organic  life  the  School  of  Mines,  he  gave  vitalizing  force  to 
the  extension  and  liberalization  of  the  undergraduate  course, 
to  the  founding  of  fellowships  for  the  encouragement  and  assist- 
ance in  their  higher  studies  of  earnest  and  able  young  men,  to 
the  extension  of  the  library  and  the  liberalization  of  its  man- 
agement, to  the  project  of  a  course  for  the  higher  study  of 
political  and  historical  subjects,  and  to  the  scheme  for  a  broad 
and  liberal  system  of  post-graduate  or  university  instruction, 
which  the  College  had  long  but  vainly  desired.  In  brief,  he 
gave  Columbia  College  a  new  life  and  a  new  significance,  and 
by  his  commanding  position  in  many  learned  societies,  by  the 
force  and  elegance  of  his  published  writings,  scientific,  literary, 
legal,  political,  educational,  and  by  his  wide  acquaintance  with 
the  foremost  men  of  his  time,  he  attracted  attention  to  the 
College,  and  did  much  to  interest  the  community  at  large  in  it. 

Age  could  not  wither  nor  custom  stale 
His  infinite  variety. 

He  possessed,  with  such  men  as  Gladstone  and  Bismarck  (it 
is  a  very  rare  quality)  the  fervor  in  age  that  he  had  in  youth, 


468  MEMOIES   OF 

and  was  as  ready  as  lie  was  before  he  had  secured  position 
and  fame,  to  take  up  a  new  idea,  a  new  project,  and  pursue  it 
with  as  much  vigor  as  if  a  long  life  were  still  before  him,  and 
all  his  reputation  yet  to  make.  It  was  this  quality  that  made 
him  a  great  president  to  the  very  last.  With  almost  his  latest 
breath,  unable  to  write,  and  speaking  with  difficulty,  he  dictated 
letters  of  counsel  upon  what  was  ever  nearest  his  great  heart  — 
Columbia  College  and  her  future. 

The  departure  of  such  a  man  is  a  loss  beyond  adequate 
expression.  But  he  is  not  wholly  lost.  During  his  long  period 
of  service,  longer  and  more  distinguished  than  that  of  any  of 
his  predecessors,  he  so  impressed  himself  upon  the  College  in 
many  vital  particulars,  that  though  dead  he  shall  yet  speak 
for  all  time  to  come. 


The  life  of  which  an  imperfect  record  has  been  given  in 
this  volume  might  well  be  left  to  teach  its  own  moral ; 
but  it  may  be  seemly,  though  it  is  not  necessary,  to  take 
some  note  of  the  most  conspicuous  features  of  the  man 
whose  long  and  arduous  career  was  closed  in  well-earned 
"honor,  love,  obedience"  from  "troops  of  friends." 

His  rich  and  varied  natural  endowments  and  the  versa- 
tility with  which  he  applied  them  in  every  position  to 
which  he  was  called  require  no  comment ;  they  speak  for 
themselves  ;  but  the  courageous  patience  with  which  he 
overcame  the  difficulties  caused  by  his  loss  of  hearing  is 
less  likely  to  be  thought  of.  Of  an  eminently  genial 
disposition,  he  was  deprived,  while  still  a  youth,  of  many 
privileges  of  social  intercourse,  and  the  rest  of  his  life 
was  passed  in  the  loneliness  to  which  the  deaf  are  doomed. 
He  was  ambitious  from  his  boyhood;  and  although  his 
love  of  distinction  was  always  rooted  in  a  love  of  excel- 
lence, there  can  be  no  doubt  that  his  original  choice  of  the 
law  as  a  profession  was  prompted  to  a  large  degree  by  a 
well-founded  hope  of  achieving  eminence  both  as  a  jurist 


FREDERICK  A.  P.  BARNARD  469 

and  as  a  statesman.  The  fortitude  with  which  he  sub- 
mitted to  the  decree  of  providence  was  illustrated  by  the 
zeal  with  which  he  applied  himself  to  the  scientific  instruc- 
tion of  deaf-mutes,  the  only  occupation  in  which  it  seemed 
possible  for  him  at  that  time  to  earn  his  bread ;  and  it 
was  characteristic  of  the  man  that  he  applied  himself  with 
such  assiduity  and  with  such  amazing  success  to  the  study 
of  his  new  profession,  that  within  a  few  years  he  became 
not  only  an  expert  teacher,  but  an  instructor  of  others  in 
the  difficult  art  of  deaf-mute  education.  When  he  found 
that  so  much  of  his  hearing  still  remained  to  him  as  to 
make  it  possible  for  him  to  accept  a  position  as  professor 
in  the  University  of  Alabama,  he  applied  himself  with  the 
same  devotion  and  the  same  success  to  the  study  of  the 
science  and  art  of  education.  He  was  not  content  to  be  a 
mere  hearer  of  recitations ;  he  became  a  fascinating  lecturer 
who  at  once  communicated  knowledge  and  inspired  his 
pupils  with  his  own  enthusiasm.  He  was  not  content  to 
join  in  the  routine  of  college  government ;  he  studied  the 
history  and  the  principles  of  the  existing  system,  and  pres- 
ently became  the  expositor  of  a  better  system  than  had 
then  been  thought  of.  When  he  was  called  to  take  the 
chief  charge  of  an  university,  he  exhibited  an  open-mind- 
edness  which  refused  to  be  trammelled  by  considerations 
of  consistency,  and  a  patience  which,  while  cherishing  the 
loftiest  ideals,  could  yet  content  itself  with  the  best  possi- 
bilities of  the  time  and  in  doing  small  things  from  great 
motives.  His  patience  was  exemplary  because 

"  His  faith  was  large  in  time, 
And  that  which  works  it  to  some  perfect  end." 

As  a  college  governor,  he  stood  always  for  the  freer  rule 
and  the  larger  trust,  with  a  generous  confidence  in  youth 
which  could  not  have  existed  if  his  own  youth  had  not 
justified  it.  Even  so,  he  might  have  failed  if  he  had 


470  MEMOIRS   OF 

lacked  sympathy.  Bulwer  somewhere  says  that  every 
great  man  has  "a  dash  of  the  boy  in  him  to  the  last"  ; 
and  to  the  last,  Barnard  had  at  least  so  much  of  the  boy 
in  him  as  to  be  able  to  understand  and  sympathize  with 
the  boy  and  to  make  his  sympathy  so  felt  that  govern- 
ment was  easy.  One  other  characteristic,  and  only  one, 
we  have  yet  to  mention,  because  it  was  inconspicuous. 
Barnard  was  a  strenuous  man,  positive  in  his  convictions, 
unfalteringly  resolute  in  action,  courageous  in  difficulty, 
sometimes  intolerant  of  opposition ;  but  with  all  this, 
there  was  an  element  of  meekness  in  his  character  which 
might  seldom  be  exhibited,  but  which  strengthened  him 
in  many  a  trial  and  contributed  no  little  to  his  ultimate 
success.  Take  him  for  all  in  all,  we  may  say  of  him,  as 
Johnson  said  of  Goldsmith,  "he  was  a  very  great  man." 

Of  his  religious  character  it  is  needless  to  speak.  Bar- 
nard was  one  of  those  men  whose  religion  was  of  the 
inward  life  ;  it  was  seldom  on  his  lips,  but  it  was  felt, 
even  when  unexpressed.  On  this  subject  we  may  borrow 
the  simple  but  eloquent  words  of  the  Bishop  of  New  York 
in  a  Baccalaureate  Sermon  preached  at  the  Commence- 
ment of  Columbia  College  a  few  weeks  after  Dr.  Barnard's 
death,  on  Phil.  iii.  12 :  "  Not  as  though  I  had  already 
attained,  or  were  already  perfect,  but  I  follow  after,  if 
that  I  may  apprehend  that  for  which  also  I  am  appre- 
hended of  Christ  Jesus."  In  concluding  his  discourse, 
Bishop  Potter  addressed  the  graduating  class  as  follows : 

As  you  turn  from  the  studies  that  thus  far  have  engrossed 
you,  I  beseech  you  to  take  with  you  into  the  life  that  lies 
before  you,  an  open  mind,  a  hearkening  ear.  More  truth  than 
you  have  yet  learned  awaits  to  reward  your  search,  if  only  you 
will  continue  to  be  a  seeker.  It  will  be  a  poor  result  of  your 
collegiate  course  if  it  has  not  taught  you  that  the  aim  of  such 
education  as  you  have  thus  far  received  is  to  fit  you  for  a 


FREDERICK  A.   P.  BxlRNARD  471 

larger  and  a  deeper  culture.  That  post-graduate  course,  which 
is  the  happy  appendix  to  the  curriculum  of  your  alma  mater, 
is  but  a  parable  of  what  all  life  was  meant  to  be,  —  a  larger 
learning,  a  deeper  humility,  a  more  eager  discontent  with 
present  attainments,  and  so  the  open  soul  that  welcomes  what- 
ever will  greaten  them. 

It  is  impossible  to  speak  such  words  in  this  presence  with- 
out remembering  one  who  was  their  splendid  illustration,  and 
whose  rare  gifts  and  attainments  have  lent  enduring  lustre 
to  the  College  of  which  you  are  Sons.  For  twenty-five  years 
its  President,  Frederick  Barnard,  revealed,  in  his  great  place, 
great  gifts,  which  were  unceasingly  ennobled  by  their  ever- 
widening  vision  and  their  never-resting  exercise.  No  man  in 
our  generation  has  more  grandly  illustrated  the  words  of  the 
Apostle  than  he.  Of  rare  attainments  and  ripe  learning  in 
more  than  one  department,  when  he  was  called  to  the  Presi- 
dency of  Columbia  College,  no  year  passed  that  did  not  see 
him  touching  a  larger  circumference  and  possessing  himself, 
not  superficially  but  profoundly,  of  that  which  lay  within  it. 
Old  in  years  when  he  passed  away,  he  was  still  young  in 
enthusiasm,  young  in  his  love  of  all  genuine  wisdom,  young  in 
his  open-mindedness.  And  all  this  he  was — student,  enquirer, 
watcher,  listener  for  the  fresh  voice  and  the  fresh  truth,  in  the 
simple  and  childlike  submission  of  a  Christian  disciple. 

Such  an  example  may  well  kindle  us  whom  he  has  left 
behind  him.  Take  it  with  you,  my  young  brothers,  into  the 
future  that  opens  now  before  you.  And  that  you  may  learn 
the  spell  that  transformed  and  ennobled  him,  go  to  school  to 
that  Master  whom  he,  with  Saul  of  Tarsus,  loved  and  followed, 
that  you  too  may  both  apprehend  and  be  apprehended  by 
Christ  Jesus. 


INDEX 


Adrain,  Dr.,  328. 

Akerly,  Dr.  Samuel,  manager  of  the 
New  York  Institution  for  the  in- 
struction of  deaf  and  dumb,  76. 

Alabama,  boundary  commission,  102. 

Alabama,  University  of,  87 ;  criticisms 
of  the  faculty,  145 ;  the  exculpation 
law,  148;  students  enter  at  the  age 
of  fourteen  and  sixteen,  163;  the 
curriculum  unchanged,  191. 

Alabama  University,  Report  on  a 
Proposition  to  modify  the  Plan  of 
Instruction  in  the  University  of  Ala- 
bama, 172 ;  the  State  of  Alabama  and 
the  University,  173 ;  the  number  of 
students  in  other  colleges  compared 
with  those  in  Alabama  University, 
175 ;  insufficient  preparation  of  stu- 
dents at  entry,  176;  evils  resulting 
from  students  taking  partial  course, 
177 ;  confusion  to  be  anticipated  in 
allowing  a  student  to  study  "what 
he  chooses,"  178;  German  Universi- 
ties, 179;  the  "  open  "  system  of  in- 
struction did  not  "proceed  from  a 
desire  for  special  or  partial  instruc- 
tion," 179;  University  of  Virginia,  its 
prosperity,  180;  Washington  College, 
experiment,  180;  Randolph  Macon 
College,  experiment,  181 ;  University 
of  Georgia,  "open"  course,  181; 
University  of  Rochester,  181 ;  Union 
College,  181 ;  degradation  of  col- 
leges by  cheapening  of  degrees,  181 ; 
extract  from  the  Report  of  Ex- 
aminers of  the  University  of  Lon- 
don, 182;  college  education  a  good 
preparation  for  the  business  of  life, 
185 ;  extract  from  Sir  William  Ham- 
ilton on  Knowledge,  186 ;  President 
Thornwell  of  South  Carolina,  186; 
technical  education,  188 ;  Dr.  Way- 
land,  188;  recommendation  of  the 
faculty,  189;  compromise  between 
the  two  extreme  propositions,  190. 


Albany,  77,  202. 

Alexander,  Professor,  261,  269. 

Alvord,  Thomas  G.,  36. 

American  Asylum  for  the  Deaf  and 
Dumb,  Hartford,  55,  72. 

American  Association  for  the  Ad- 
vancement of  Science,  241. 

Anthon,  Mr.  Charles,  328. 

Appleton  &  Co.  publish  Letters  on  Col- 
lege Government,  145. 

Asiatic  cholera,  1832,  75. 

Averil,  Chester,  at  Stockbridge,  23. 

Bache,  Professor  A.  D.,  260,  261,  290. 

Bache,  Mount,  268. 

Banyer,  Mr.  Goldsbrow,  306. 

Bard,  Dr.  Samuel,  321. 

Barnard,  Colonel  Robert  Foster,  Dr. 
Barnard's  father,  1. 

Barnard,  Sarah,  Dr.  Barnard's  sister, 
11. 

Barnard,  F.  A.  P.,  Mrs.,  advocate  of 
temperance,  106 ;  her  aversion  to 
Mississippi,  194. 

Barnard,  John  G.,  Dr.  Barnard's 
brother,  11. 

Barnard,  Hon.  Henry,  428. 

Barnard  College,  established  in  con- 
nection with  Columbia,  421,  422. 

Barnard,  F.  A.  P.,  his  birthplace, 
Sheffield,  Mass.,  1 ;  his  descendants, 
1  ;  autobiographical  sketch  con- 
tributed to  The  Forum,  3 ;  his  boy- 
hood, 5 ;  posting  public  notices  in 
the  meeting-house,  8;  publishing 
banns  by  word  of  mouth,  9 ;  careful 
training  by  his  mother,  9 ;  anecdote 
of  his  mother,  10 ;  his  teachers,  10  ; 
school  life^  11 ;  religious  instruction, 
13;  first  experience  of  the  tender 
passion,  14 ;  goes  to  grammar  school, 
14 ;  studies  at  the  parson's  school,  15 ; 
boyish  studies,  16;  his  fondness  for 
reading,  16 ;  his  taste  for  handicraft, 
17 ;  goes  to  live  with  his  grandfather, 


473 


474 


INDEX 


Dr.  Porter,  17 ;  enters  the  Saratoga 
Academy,  17;  classical  studies,  17; 
his  skill  as  a  printer,  19;  pleasant 
recollections  of  Saratoga  Academy, 
20. 

CHAPTER  II.  Goes  to  Stockbridge 
Academy,  22;  his  dislike  of  school 
work  at  Stockbridge,  22 ;  his  prep- 
aration for  Yale,  22;  his  fellow- 
pupils  at  Stockbridge,  23 ;  schoolboy 
friendship  for  Mark  Hopkins,  23; 
mechanical  ingenuity,  24;  boyish 
sports,  24;  amateur  lectures  on 
physics,  26 ;  his  Evenings  at  Home, 
26;  conversation  on  progress  and 
reform  in  Salisbury  Iron  Works,  27 ; 
boyish  frolic,  28;  dispute  with  a 
tutor  at  Stockbridge,  30;  leaves 
Stockbridge,  31  ;  troubled  about 
proportion,  31 ;  his  examination  for 
admission  to  Yale,  32;  his  account 
of  Yale  in  1824-28, 33;  distinguished 
as  a  student  at  Yale,  33 ;  his  class- 
mates at  Yale,  36 ;  social  influences 
of  college  life,  37 ;  takes  his  degree, 
38 ;  as  a  teacher  at  Hartford  Gram- 
mar School,  38 ;  reflections  on  college 
education,  38;  studies  modern  lan- 
guages, 39;  becomes  attached  to 
the  Episcopal  Church,  39 ;  asks  his 
father's  permission  to  attend  the 
Episcopal  Church,  40. 

CHAPTER  III.  Teacher  at  Hart- 
ford Grammar  School,  41 ;  his  first 
experience  in  teaching,  42 ;  his  deaf- 
ness, shadow  of  an  affliction,  43; 
studies  law,  43;  newspaper  contro- 
versy, 44 ;  on  the  study  of  Greek  and 
Latin,  45;  corrects  Miss  Beecher's 
Latin  grammar,  47 ;  Miss  Beecher's 
method  of  teaching  Latin,  48 ;  Miss 
Beecher's  soirees,  51;  first  work  as 
an  author,  an  arithmetic,  51 ;  edits 
The  New  England  Review,  51;  his 
Fourth  of  July  oration  at  Sheffield, 
52 ;  gradually  becoming  deaf,  54 ;  his 
second  year  at  Hartford,  54;  his 
early  efforts  in  literature,  56 ;  Bart- 
lett  urges  him  to  become  an  in- 
structor of  deaf  mutes,  56;  his 
English,  poetry  and  prose,  57;  A 
Serenade,  57 ;  his  acquaintance  with 
Park  Benjamin,  59 ;  call  to  tutorship 
at  Yale,  62 ;  his  Hartford  friends,  62. 

CHAPTER  IV.  Tutor  in  mathe- 
matics at  Yale,  64 ;  his  turn  to  offici- 


ate in  the  public  services  of  the 
College  Chapel,  66;  his  leniency 
toward  the  student  at  Yale  on  trial 
for  breach  of  discipline,  67 ;  increas- 
ing deafness,  69;  resigns  tutorship 
to  accept  a  position  at  the  American 
Institution  for  Deaf  and  Dumb  at 
Hartford,  71 ;  enters  upon  his  new 
duties,  72;  resides  with  his  friend 
Bartlett  at  Mrs.  Sigourney's  during 
the  cholera  year,  1832,  75 ;  invited 
to  join  the  New  York  Institution  for 
Deaf  and  Dumb,  77;  at  the  mar- 
riage of  his  sister,  77 ;  visits  the 
New  York  Institution,  77;  resigns 
position  at  Hartford,  77;  his  work 
at  the  New  York  Institution  for 
Deaf-mutes,  79;  fondness  for  music, 
80  ;  scientific  investigations,  81  ; 
contributions  to  scientific  period- 
icals, 82 ;  publishes  Analytic  Gram- 
mar with  Symbolic  Illustrations,  82  ; 
regular  attendant  at  St.  Thomas' 
Church,  83 ;  becomes  a  candidate  for 
holy  orders,  83;  writes  article  on 
electro-magnetism  for  Park  Benja- 
min, 83;  meets  Dr.  Basil  Manly, 
President  of  the  University  of  Ala- 
bama, 84 ;  leaves  New  York  for  Tus- 
kaloosa,  85;  visits  Richmond,  85; 
elected  Professor  of  Mathematics 
and  Natural  Philosophy  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Alabama,  85. 

CHAPTER  V.  His  varied  services 
at  thQ  University  of  Alabama,  87 ; 
his  methods  of  instruction,  88; 
transferred  to  the  chair  of  Chem- 
istry and  Natural  History,  88 ;  his  ex- 
periment of  the  earth's  rotation,  89 ; 
his  inventions  in  photography,  90; 
establishes  a  photographic  portrait 
gallery,  90 ;  supplies  temporarily  the 
chair  of  English  Literature,  90 ;  edi- 
torial mystifications,  writes  for 
Whig  and  Democrat,  91;  actively 
engaged  in  journalism,  91 ;  una- 
vowed  editor  of  The  Monitor,  91 ;  A 
Valentine,  sonnet,  92 ;  contributes  to 
The  Southron,  92 ;  Forgetfulness  in 
verse,  93;  Ode  to  a  Jack-Knife,  94; 
his  oration  on  The  Claims  of  Ma- 
sonry to  the  Respect  and  Veneration 
of  Mankind,  95 ;  success  of  the  Ma- 
sonic oration,  recognition  of  his  mer- 
its, 101 ;  appointed  astronomer  to  the 
Alabama  and  Florida  boundary  com- 


INDEX 


475 


mission,  103;  his  marriage  to  Miss 
Margaret  McMurray,  104;  his  in- 
come, 105;  renews  candidature  for 
holy  orders,  105;  advocate  of  total 
abstinence,  106;  writes  patriotic 
hymn,  108. 

CHAPTER  VI.  His  Oration  on  the 
Fourth  of  July,  1851,  at  Tuskaloosa, 
108,  112,  140;  Independence  Ode, 
July  4,  1851,  140. 

CHAPTER  VII.  His  theological 
views,  141;  studies  for  ordination, 
142 ;  controversy  with  Hon.  H.  W. 
Collier,  143 ;  Letters  on  College 
Government,  143;  defective  system 
of  governing  American  Colleges, 
145;  The  Mobile  Register  declines 
to  publish  any  more  Letters  on 
College  Government,  145;  the  ex- 
culpation law  of  the  University  of 
Alabama,  148;  visitation  of  rooms 
by  professors,  152;  visitation  system 
indispensable,  154 ;  an  ideal  college 
officer,  156 ;  his  views  on  very  young 
boys  entering  college,  165;  advises 
the  abandonment  of  the  dormitory 
system,  166 ;  selection  of  a  site  for 
a  college,  167. 

CHAPTER  VIII.  His  Report  on  a 
Proposition  to  Modify  the  Plan  of 
Instruction  in  the  University  of 
Alabama,  168 ;  action  of  the  Board 
of  Trustees  of  Alabama  University, 
169;  his  opposition  to  proposed 
change  of  the  curriculum,  170 ;  visit 
to  the  Mississippi  University,  192; 
urged  to  become  a  candidate  for  the 
chair  of  Physics  and  Chemistry  at 
Mississippi  University,  192 ;  declines 
the  chair  of  Chemistry  at  Missis- 
sippi University,  193;  accepts  the 
chair  of  Mathematics  and  Natural 
Philosophy  in  Mississippi  Univer- 
sity, 194;  his  ordination  as  deacon, 
195 ;  preaches  his  first  sermon,  195 ; 
preparations  for  removal  to  Oxford, 
Miss.,  195. 

CHAPTER  IX.  Arrival  at  Missis- 
sippi University,  197 ;  course  of  lect- 
ures on  experimental  chemistry 
added  to  his  other  duties,  198;  re- 
ceives priest's  orders,  198 ;  condition 
of  the  University,  198 ;  in  charge  of 
the  Episcopal  Church,  Oxford, 
Miss.,  198;  inquiry  into  the  Semi- 
nary Fund,  199;  goes  to  Jackson, 


Miss.,  to  investigate,  200;  address 
before  the  State  Legislature,  Jack- 
son, Miss.,  201;  at  the  inaugura- 
tion of  the  Dudley  Observatory 
at  Albany,  N.  Y.,  202;  appointed 
President  of  the  University  of  Mis- 
sissippi, 203;  discipline  improved, 
204 ;  power  of  the  faculty  increased, 
204 ;  his  speech  before  the  trustees, 
205 ;  instruction  in  the  University 
intrusted  to  the  faculty,  205;  Chan- 
cellor of  the  University  of  Missis- 
sippi, 205 ;  the  curriculum  of  arts, 
207;  plans  for  reorganization,  208; 
open  letter  to  the  board  of  trustees, 
209 ;  efforts  to  secure  an  astronomi- 
cal observatory,  221. 

CHAPTER  X.  Effect  of  his  Open 
Letter,  234;  difficulties  and  dis- 
couragements, 235;  two  years  of 
progress,  235 ;  letter  to  Dr.  Hilgard, 
236;  correspondence  with  Bishop 
Polk,  237 ;  University  of  the  South, 
237 ;  Bishop  Green's  scheme  to  visit 
and  study  educational  institutions, 
238;  letter  to  Dr.  Hilgard,  238;  dis- 
couraged, 239 ;  letter  to  Dr.  Hilgard, 
239 ;  appointed  chairman  of  the  com- 
mittee to  inquire  into  the  Coast  Sur- 
vey of  the  United  States,  242 :  letter 
to  Dr.  Hilgard,  242 ;  report  of  Coast 
Survey  with  introduction  explana- 
tory, 243 ;  address  before  the  Society 
of  the  Alumni  of  Yale,  244;  degree 
of  Doctor  of  Laws,  Yale,  244;  de- 
gree of  Doctor  of  Laws,  Jefferson 
College,  Miss.,  244;  work  on  the 
astronomical  observatory,  244 ;  tele- 
scope for  his  observatory  now  at 
Dearborn  Observatory,  Chicago, 
245 ;  petty  persecutions,  246 ;  student 
assaults  a  female  servant,  246 ;  not 
at  liberty  to  convict  on  negro  evi- 
dence, 247;  trial  of  student  before 
the  faculty,  247 ;  secrecy  of  faculty 
meeting  disregarded,  248;  faculty 
convinced  of  student's  guilt,  resolu- 
tion adopted,  248;  resolution  lost  to 
suspend  the  student,  248;  accused 
of  trying  to  convict  a  student  on 
negro  evidence,  249 ;  charges  brought 
by  Dr.  Branham,  249 ;  investigation 
of  the  charges  by  the  board  of  trus- 
tees, 250;  the  charges  of  Dr.  Branham 
laid  before  the  board  by  Barnard, 
250;  resolutions  that  the  charges 


476 


INDEX 


are  wholly  unsustained,  adopted 
unanimously,  251;  as  a  man  of 
Northern  birth  living  South  before 
the  war,  251 ;  his  views  on  slavery, 
252;  "sound  on  the  slavery  ques- 
tion," 253;  a  Union  man,  253;  ser- 
mon on  the  Union,  delivered  at 
Oxford,  Thanksgiving  Day,  Nov., 
1856,  255;  extract  from  report  of 
trustees  of  Mississippi  University  on 
his  retirement,  258 ;  his  action  in  pro- 
tecting his  helpless  servant  justified, 
258 ;  letter  from  Mr.  Jacob  Thomp- 
son, 258 ;  at  Jefferson  Da  vis's  recep- 
tion, Oxford,  1860,  259 ;  annoyed  at 
the  charge  of  secret  disloyalty,  260 ; 
accepts  appointment  to  accompany 
Astronomical  Expedition  to  Labra- 
dor, 260 ;  his  account  of  expedition 
to  Labrador,  261 ;  elected  President 
of  American  Association  for  the 
Advancement  of  Science,  269;  pre- 
vented by  the  war  from  presiding 
in  1861,  269 ;  presides  at  the  Chicago 
meeting  of  the  Association,  1868, 270. 
CHAPTER  XI.  Political  excite- 
ment in  the  South,  271;  did  not 
share  in  the  delusion  that  a  peace- 
able dissolution  was  possible,  273; 
interview  with  Mr.  De  Bow,  273; 
expects  war  as  a  result  of  seces- 
sion, 274;  his  love  for  the  Union, 
274;  letter  to  Miss  Gilliss,  274; 
for  the  Union,  "  first,  last,  and  for- 
ever," 275;  events  following  the 
inauguration  of  Lincoln,  276 ;  objects 
to  students  joining  the  military,  277 ; 
addresses  a  circular  letter  to  the 
parents  and  guardians  of  students, 
278;  resigns  chancellorship  of  Uni- 
versity of  Mississippi,  278;  with- 
draws his  resignation  at  the  request 
of  trustees,  279 ;  letter  to  Miss  Gil- 
liss, 279 ;  final  resignation,  284 ;  hope 
against  hope  that  hostilities  may 
soon  cease,  280 ;  his  position  in  the 
South  at  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
280;  attends  the  Montgomery  con- 
vention of  the  Episcopal  Church, 
281 ;  his  sermon  at  Oxford,  June  13, 
1861, 282 ;  misapprehension  North  and 
South,  283 ;  ruined  by  secession,  284 ; 
honorary  degree  of  Doctor  of  Sacred 
Theology,  284;  endeavors  to  secure 
passport  to  the  North,  284 ;  appointed 
inspector  of  military  schools  of  South 


Carolina  and  Virginia,  285 ;  visit  to 
Craney  Island,  James  River,  285; 
his  joy  at  seeing  the  United  States 
flag,  285;  visit  to  Jefferson  Davis 
in  Richmond,  286 ;  his  interview  with 
Jefferson  Davis,  286;  visit  to  mili- 
tary academy  at  Lexington,  287 ;  his 
farewell  to  the  trustees  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Mississippi,  287 ;  lives  in 
Norfolk,  Va.,  until  the  city  is  cap- 
tured by  Federal  troops,  288;  at 
Washington  as  a  "refugee,"  289;  no 
longer  doubts  the  issue  of  the  con- 
flict, 290 ;  visits  with  Mrs.  Barnard, 
President  Lincoln,  290;  appointed 
to  position  in  the  Coast  Survey,  map 
and  chart  department,  291;  Letter 
to  the  President  by  a  Refugee,  291 ; 
changes  his  opinion  on  the  slavery 
question,  292 ;  criticism  of  Mr.  Lin- 
coln in  his  Letter,  293;  danger  of 
treason  at  the  North,  295;  the  North 
and  the  West,  297;  elected  Presi- 
dent of  Columbia  College,  298 ;  let- 
ters from  General  W.  T.  Sherman, 
298-300. 

CHAPTER  XII.  History  of  King's 
and  Columbia  College,  301-338. 

CHAPTER  XIII.  As  President  of 
Columbia  College,  339 ;  college  and 
university,  339 ;  his  efforts  on  behalf 
of  the  School  of  Mines,  341 ;  secures 
an  intelligent  and  powerful  support 
for  his  administration,  343 ;  selection 
of  topic  for  his  inaugural  address, 
343 ;  conflict  of  science  and  religion, 
344;  The  Relation  of  Physical 
Science  to  Revealed  Religion,  in- 
augural address,  Columbia  College, 
344;  his  inaugural  address  widely 
copied  in  periodicals  of  the  time, 
361. 

CHAPTER  XIV.  United  States 
commissioner  to  the  Exposition, 
Paris,  1867,  382 ;  travels  in  Europe, 
363 ;  Vienna,  1873, 363 ;  United  States 
commissioner  to  the  Exposition, 
Paris,  1876,  363;  receives  from 
French  government  decoration  of 
an  officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honor, 
363;  his  true  life  as  an  educator, 
363;  discouragement  at  the  begin- 
ning of  presidency,  364;  his  report 
on  rules  of  conduct,  365 ;  advocates 
admission  of  students  to  participate 
in  the  government  of  the  college, 


INDEX 


477 


366;  his  rules  concerning  attend- 
ance at  college  exercises,  367 ;  candi- 
dates admitted  without  preliminary 
examination,  376;  recommends  a 
system  of  school  visitations  to  ex- 
amine senior  classes  for  admission 
to  the  college,  377 ;  urges  the  revival 
of  the  grammar  school  which  once 
existed  in  connection  with  the  col- 
lege, 378. 

CHAPTER  XV.  Change  of  view  on 
the  subject  of  elective  studies,  379; 
professional  schools  maintained 
apart  from  the  college,  379 ;  changes 
in  the  curriculum  at  Columbia,  380 ; 
system  of  running  schools  of  London 
and  Paris,  380 ;  collegiate  education 
gaining  favor,  383;  the  growing 
interest  in  physical  science,  384; 
"clamor"  against  classical  studies, 
384 ;  statistics  of  American  colleges, 
385 ;  reports  the  successful  operation 
of  the  elective  system,  389;  revival 
of  the  double  course,  389 ;  again  re- 
ports the  satisfactory  working  of  the 
elective  system,  1876,  390 ;  urges  an 
extension  of  the  elective  system  of 
study,  393. 

CHAPTER  XVI.  Consistency  of  his 
change  of  view  on  the  elective  sys- 
tem, 396 ;  describes  the  college  of  the 
future,  398;  favors  post-graduate 
instruction,  399;  his  plan  to  make 
Columbia  a  great  University,  399; 
graduate  fellows  employed  as  as- 
sistant teachers,  400 ;  Columbia  the 
American  University  of  the  future, 
402;  his  last  report  (1888),  no  mis- 
fortune if  Columbia  College  should 
cease  to  exist  as  a  school  for  under- 
graduate students,  404;  urges  the 
creation  of  fellowships,  404 ;  on  the 
expediency  of  admitting  women  to 
all  departments  of  Columbia,  407; 
objections  to  women  entering  Co- 
lumbia, 411 ;  urges  that  the  presence 
of  women  in  colleges  is  conducive 
to  good  order,  412;  his  account  of 
English  colleges,  414 ;  again  presses 
upon  the  trustees  the  importance  of 
admitting  women  to  Columbia,  415 ; 
abandons  the  hope  of  living  to  see 
women  admitted  to  Columbia,  418 ; 
the  founding  of  Barnard  College  for 
women,  422. 

CHAPTER  XVII.  His  early  educa- 


tion and  its  defects,  424 ;  his  knowl- 
edge of  Latin  and  Greek,  425; 
education  as  a  science,  teaching 
as  an  art,  426;  his  knowledge  of 
modern  languages,  426;  to  establish 
a  department  of  the  history,  theory, 
and  practice  of  education,  427 ;  the 
ideal  school,  439;  his  contributions 
to  literature,  446;  his  publications 
on  educational  and  other  subjects, 
447 ;  his  contributions  to  the  Ameri- 
can Association  for  the  Advance- 
ment of  Science,  447;  his  annual 
reports  and  addresses,  448 ;  as  editor- 
in-chief  of  Johnson's  Cyclopaedia, 
449;  the  honors  bestowed  on  him, 
450;  the  growth  of  Columbia  Col- 
lege under  his  presidency,  454  ; 
his  last  report,  1887,  ends  with  a 
few  remarks  which  he  describes  as 
"apologetic,"  456;  his  resignation 
as  President  of  Columbia  College, 
1888,  457 ;  his  death,  April  27,  1889, 
461;  his  funeral  at  St.  Thomas' 
Church,  461;  buried  at  Sheffield, 
Mass.,  462 ;  his  will,  462;  bequests  to 
Columbia  College,  462 ;  his  courage- 
ous patience  under  great  affliction, 
468 ;  as  a  college  governor,  469 ;  his 
sympathetic  character,  470;  a  posi- 
tive man,  407 ;  his  religious  charac- 
ter, 470 ;  extract  from  a  sermon  by 
Bishop  Potter,  470. 

Barrows,  Rev.  Professor,  41. 

Bartlett,  David  Ely,  65,  79. 

Beecher,    Miss    Catherine,    47;    her 
method  of  teaching  Latin,  47. 

Beecher,  Miss  Harriet,  48. 

Beekman,  Henry,  305. 

Beekman,  Gerard,  458. 

Benagh,  Professor,  171. 

Benjamin,  Park,  69. 

Berkeley,  Bishop,  302. 

Betts,  William,  professor  of  law,  331. 

Betts,    Kev.    Beverly    R.,    librarian, 
302. 

Blake's  First  Lessons  in  Natural  Phi- 
losophy, 26. 

Boston  University,  414. 

Brace,  Julia,  deaf,  dumb,  and  blind, 
74. 

Branham,  Dr.,  249. 

Brewer,  Josiah,  35. 

Brown,  Samuel  R.,  79. 

Brown,  Rev.  Dr.,  462. 

Burnaby,  Rev,  Dr.,  311. 


478 


INDEX 


Canterbury,  Archbishop  of,  304. 

Carter,  Rev.  William,  41;  friendship 
for  Barnard,  44. 

Carter,  Professor,  248. 

Cary,  Mr.,  79. 

Chambers,  Mr.,  307. 

Chandler,  Professor  Charles  F.,  334. 

Chapin,  Rev.  Dr.  A.  L.,  letter  from, 
42. 

Chapman's  Sermons,  40. 

Clark,  Lewis  Gaylord,  62. 

Clark,  Alvan,  244. 

Clarkson,  David,  305. 

Classical  studies  in  early  years,  17. 

Clerc,  M.  Laurent,  72. 

Clossy,  Dr.,  312. 

Cobbs,  Dr.,  Bishop  of  Alabama,  105. 

College,  examinations  at  Yale  in  1824, 
31 ;  government  of,  143, 145 ;  visita- 
tion of  rooms  by  professors,  152 ;  life 
in  America  compared  with  English, 
163 ;  influences  on  morals  and  man- 
ners of  students,  164;  system  of 
education  in  Alabama  and  Virginia 
Universities,  169;  elective  system 
of  studies,  170;  discipline  in  the 
University  of  Mississippi,  246;  and 
University,  their  functions,  339; 
discipline,  364 ;  participation  of  stu- 
dents in  government  of  colleges,  366 ; 
exercises,  rules,  367;  marking  sys- 
tem, 368;  cheating  in  examination 
room,  373;  oral  examinations,  373; 
grading  of  classes,  374 ;  faults  in  sys- 
tem of  marking,  370 ;  classical  stud- 
ies, 381, 384 ;  modern  languages,  381 ; 
systematic  mental  training  as  a  prep- 
aration for  professional  life,  396; 
elective  studies,  379,  391;  curricu- 
lum overloaded,  388;  mental  disci- 
pline, 387 ;  age  of  entering,  397 ;  the 
fellowships,  404 ;  admission  of  wom- 
en, 407,  409,  410,  413,  420;  courses 
in  Scottish  Universities,  427 ;  Univer- 
sity courses,  428;  evening  lectures, 
430;  philosophy  of  education,  431. 

COLUMBIA  COLLEGE,  Barnard  elected 
President,  298;  University  of  the 
State  of  New  York  organized  1784, 
319 ;  the  college  known  as  King's  to 
be  called  Columbia  College,  319; 
first  trustees,  320;  organization  of 
the  board  of  trustees,  320 ;  William 
Samuel  Johnson,  LL.D.,  first  Presi- 
dent of  Columbia  College,  1787,  321 ; 
Faculties  of  Arts  and  Medicine, 


321 ;  faculty  of  Medical  School  en- 
larged, 321 ;  college  library  enlarged, 
322;  enlargement  of  the  faculty  of 
college,  322 ;  Kent,  James,  Professor 
of  Law,  322;  further  appropriation 
from  Legislature  refused,  322;  re- 
duced means  and  consequences,  323; 
Dr.  Johnson  resigns  presidency, 
1800,  323;  Dr.  Wharton,  of  Phila- 
delphia, elected  President,  1801,  323 ; 
Dr.  Wharton  resigns,  324;  Right 
Rev.  Bishop  Moore  appointed  Presi- 
dent, 324;  Bowden,  Rev.  Dr.,  324; 
internal  organization  of  the  college 
under  Bishop  Moore,  324 ;  new  char- 
ter, 1810,  325 ;  report  of  the  Regents, 

1810,  325;    Bishop    Moore    resigns, 

1811,  326;    new    office    of    provost 
created,  326 ;  the  Rev.  William  Har- 
ris elected  President,  326 ;  Rev.  Dr. 
John  M.  Mason  elected  provost,  326 ; 
the  division  of  responsibility  abol- 
ished, 326;   the  Medical  School  in- 
corporated   with    the    College    of 
Physicians  and  Surgeons,  1813,  326 ; 
the  Botanic  Garden  granted  to  the 
College,  326;  history  and  value  of 
the  grant,  327 ;    extension,  altera- 
tions, and  repairs  to  buildings,  327 ; 
Dr.  Wilson  retires,  and  receives  an 
annuity,  328 ;  Dr.  Adrain,  Professor 
of    Mathematics    and    Astronomy, 
328 ;  Mr.  James  Renwick,  Professor 
of  Natural  and  Experimental  Phi- 
losophy, 328;   Mr.   C.   Anthon  and 
Mr.  N.  F.  Moore  appointed  to  the 
position  vacated  by  Professor  Moore, 
328 ;  McVickar,  Professor,  328 ;  Mr. 
James  Kent  appointed  Professor  of 
Law,    and  delivers  lectures   after- 
wards expanded  into  his  great  com- 
mentaries,   329;    grammar    school 
established,  329 ;  John  D.  Ogilby  ap- 
pointed master  of  grammar  school, 
329;   grammar  school  discontinued 
in  1864,  329;   death  of  Dr.  Harris, 
329;  Hon.  W.  A.  Duer,  LL.D.,  ap- 
pointed President,  1829,  329 ;  double 
course  of  study,  Literary  and  Scien- 
tific, discontinued  in  1843,  330 ;  the 
fiftieth    anniversary  celebrated    in 
1837,  330;   additions  to  the  college 
library,     330;      Moore,     Professor, 
librarian,  330;  Nathaniel  F.  Moore 
succeeds  President  Duer,  1842,  331  ; 
Professorship    of    German    estab- 


INDEX 


479 


listed,  331;  Tellkampf,  Professor 
John  Lewis,  331;  Schmidt,  Rev. 
Henry  L,  331;  chair  of  elocution 
established,  1844, 331 ;  William  Betts, 
A.M.,  succeeds  Chancellor  Kent, 
331;  Charles  King,  LL.D.,  elected 
to  succeed  Dr.  Moore,  331 ;  order  of 
emeritus  professors  established,  332 ; 
Renwick,  Dr.,  first  of  emeritus  pro- 
fessors, 332 ;  plans  for  post-graduate 
instruction,  332 ;  College  removed  to 
the  buildings  occupied  by  the  New 
York  Institution  for  the  Instruction 
of  Deaf  and  Dumb,  1857,  332 ;  plans 
for  parallel  course  of  study,  333; 
trustees  organize  a  Law  School 
under  Professor  Dwight,  1858,  334; 
Lieber,  Professor  Francis,  334; 
Nairne,  C.  M.,  334;  Ordronaux,  Dr. 
John,  334;  School  of  Mines  estab- 
lished, 1864,  334 ;  Egleston,  Thomas, 
Jr.,  Professor  of  Mineralogy,  334; 
Vinton,  Brigadier-General  Francis 
G.,  Professor  of  Mining  Engineer- 
ing, 334;  Chandler,  Charles  F.,  Pro- 
fessor of  Analytical  and  Applied 
Chemistry,  334 ;  resignation  of  Pres- 
ident King,  335;  Rev.  F.  A.  P. 
Barnard,  LL.D.,  elected  President  of 
Columbia  College,  1864,  335 ;  its  con- 
dition at  the  time  of  Dr.  Barnard's 
appointment,  340. 

Dr.  Barnard's  inaugural  address, 
The  Relation  of  Physical  Science  to 
Revealed  Religion,  344 ;  does  not  rec- 
ognize such  a  conflict,  345 ;  system 
of  education  at  Columbia  adapted  to 
prepare  students  for  any  pursuit  or 
profession,  345;  study  of  physical 
science  and  religion,  346 ;  the  Bible 
and  modern  science,  348;  scientific 
research  in  accordance  with  God's 
will,  349 ;  the  study  of  nature  tends 
to  foster  the  spirit  of  humility,  of 
devotion,  etc.,  351;  the  recognition 
of  law  in  nature  not  destructive  of 
belief  in  miracle  to  the  mind  of  any 
man  who  believes  in  God,  352 ;  sci- 
ence favorable  to  sound  religion, 
353;  extracts  from  Milman,  354; 
Milman's  view  of  Christianity,  355 ; 
present  relations  of  physical  science 
to  revealed  religion,  355 ;  the  Bible 
not  a  book  of  science,  356 ;  the  evo- 
lutionary theory,  357 ;  religious  men 
should  study  science  and  refrain 


from  pronouncing  upon  its  tenden- 
cies until  they  understand  it,  358; 
earnest  Christians  should  be  culti- 
vators of  scientific  study,  359;  a 
certain  spirit  prevalent  among  sci- 
entific men  ought  to  be  corrected, 
359 ;  spirit  of  Christian  forbearance, 
360. 

Number  of  students,  364;  disci- 
pline Barnard's  first  care,  365 ;  the 
marking  system,  369;  standard  of 
scholarship  dependent  upon  peri- 
odical examinations,  370;  marking 
system  abolished,  1869,  370;  final 
order  of  merit  obtained  by  combin- 
ing results  of  monthly  examina- 
tions, 372 ;  the  new  method  of  order 
of  merit  open  to  some  objections, 
372 ;  increase  of  students  after  1872, 
376;  revival  of  the  double  course, 
389 ;  success  of  the  elective  system, 
390;  elective  system  of  study  adopted 
for  the  Junior  and  Senior  years,  393 ; 
Dr.  Barnard  on  the  admission  of 
women  to  Columbia,  407;  the  ex- 
pediency of  admitting  women  to 
Columbia,  408 ;  a  course  of  study 
for  women  outside  the  college,  but 
under  the  direction  of  the  faculty, 
420;  students  of  Barnard  and  Co- 
lumbia study  together  Senior  year, 
422;  table  of  attendance  1865  to 
1888,  423 ;  ought  to  have  a  depart- 
ment of  the  history,  theory,  and 
practice  of  education,  427;  evening 
lectures  proposed  by  Dr.  Barnard, 
430;  the  Academic  Departments  in 
1885,  451 ;  its  growth  under  the 
presidency  of  Dr.  Barnard,  454; 
schools  for  the  instruction  of  grad- 
uates, 455 ;  Dr.  Barnard's  resigna- 
tion as  President,  1888,  457 ;  report 
of  special  committee  appointed  to 
consider  Dr.  Barnard's  resigna- 
tion, 458 ;  Dr.  Barnard's  bequests  to 
Columbia  College,  462 ;  Extract  from 
Minutes  of  Meeting  of  the  Trustees 
of  Columbia  College,  465  ;  Extract 
from  the  Minutes  of  the  Alumni  of 
Columbia  College,  466. 

Cooper,    Rev.    Myles,    President    of 
King's  College,  312,  317. 

Collier,  Hon.  Henry  W.,  143. 

Cornbury,  Lord,  Governor,  302. 

Cornell  University,  386,  411. 

Cruger,  John,  305 ;  Henry,  305. 


480 


INDEX 


Curtis,  Jared,  head  master  at  Stock- 
bridge  Academy,  22. 
Cooper,  Ashley,  at  Stockbridge,  23. 
Gushing,  Leonard,  310. 
Gushing,  Matthew,  312. 

Daggett,  Oliver  E.,  37. 

Dana,  Professor,  90. 

Day,  Henry  N.,  37. 

Day,  George  E.,  79. 

Day,  Dr.,  President  of  Yale,  35, 36, 83. 

Davis,  Mr.  Jefferson,  visits  Oxford, 
Miss.,  259. 

De  Bow,  J.  B.,  editor  of  The  Southern 
Review,  273. 

De  Lancey,  Oliver,  305. 

De  Lancey,  Lieutenant-Governor 
James,  305,  306. 

Dewey,  Rev.  Orville,  14;  letter  to 
Barnard,  234. 

Dix,  Rev.  Dr.,  458,  462,  465. 

Domino  Harbor,  263-266. 

Drisler,  Professor,  364. 

Duffie,  Rev.  Dr.,  462. 

Duer,  Hon.  W.  A.,  President  of  Colum- 
bia College,  329. 

Dutch  Church,  New  York,  appoint- 
ment of  Professor  at  King's  College, 
308. 

Dwight,  T.  W.,  Professor  of  Law, 
334. 

Dwight,  President,  of  Yale,  462. 

Education,  home  training,  9;  influ- 
ence of  teachers  on  Barnard  as  a 
child,  10;  method  of  instruction  in 
village  school,  11 ;  the  village  school, 
11;  religious  instruction  in  New 
England  village  school,  13;  gram- 
mar school,  14;  grammar  school 
method  of  instruction,  15 ;  Saratoga 
Academy  method  of  instruction,  17 ; 
Stockbridge  Academy,  preparatory 
school  for  college,  22 ;  itinerant  lec- 
turers, 25;  object  teaching,  26; 
school  discipline,  30;  college  exam- 
ination at  Yale,  1824,  31 ;  system  of 
instruction  at  Yale,  1824-1828,  33; 
literary  societies  at  Yale,  1824-1828, 
36;  Hartford  grammar  school,  pre- 
paratory school  for  college,  41;  on 
the  study  of  Greek  and  Latin,  45; 
Governing  Board  of  Yale  College, 
65 ;  teachers  of  deaf-mutes,  71 ;  sign- 
language  of  deaf-mutes,  73;  Bar- 
nard's method  of  instruction  in 


Mathematics  and  Natural  Philoso- 
phy, 88;  government  of  colleges, 
145 ;  law  of  dismission  at  Yale,  147 ; 
discipline  at  Yale,  147 ;  visitation  of 
rooms  by  professors,  152 ;  American 
college  life  compared  with  English, 
163 ;  influences  of  college  life  on  the 
morals  and  manners  of  the  students, 
164 ;  system  of  education  in  Alabama 
and  Virginia  universities,  169;  the 
elective  system  of  studies,  170 ;  value 
of  the  curriculum  of  arts,  206 ;  a  case 
of  college  discipline  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Mississippi,  246 ;  college  disci- 
pline, 364;  students  to  participate 
in  the  government  of  colleges,  366 ; 
rules  concerning  attendance  at  col- 
lege exercises,  367 ;  marking  system 
in  colleges,  368;  term-mark,  369; 
counter-system  of  demerit  marks, 
369;  faults  in  the  system  of  mark- 
ing used  in  Columbia  College,  370; 
cheating  in  examination  room,  373 ; 
oral  examinations,  373;  grading  of 
classes,  374 ;  method  of  determining 
academic  rank  practised  at  Yale, 
375 ;  faculties  sent  to  schools  to  ex- 
amine senior  classes  for  admission 
to  college,  377;  students  entering 
college  frequently  found  not  to  have 
received  preliminary  training,  377; 
elective  studies,  379;  modern  lan- 
guages, 381;  Latin  and  Greek,  381; 
Harvard  College  system  of  study, 
381;  theory  of  college  curriculum 
exclusively  for  mental  discipline  re- 
jected, 387 ;  college  curriculum  over- 
loaded, 388 ;  the  elective  system  of 
study,  391 ;  systematic  mental  train- 
ing as  a  preparation  for  the  serious 
studies  of  professional  life,  396 ;  the 
age  at  which  young  men  enter  col- 
lege, 397;  young  men  entering  col- 
lege have  usually  formed  some  idea 
of  their  future  occupation,  397;  col- 
lege studies  more  or  less  directly 
serviceable,  398 ;  the  fellowship  sys- 
tem, 404;  the  admission  of  women 
to  colleges,  407 ;  women  in  colleges, 
409;  higher  education  of  women  in 
England  and  America,  409;  women 
admitted  in  more  than  half  the  col- 
leges of  United  States,  410 ;  the  sexes 
more  occupied  with  each  other  than 
with  their  books,  413 ;  establishment 
of  Barnard  College  for  women,  420; 


INDEX 


481 


the  work  of  a  teacher  in  preparatory 
schools,  424 ;  as  a  science,  teaching 
as  an  art,  426 ;  Barnard's  suggestion 
for  department  of  history,  theory 
and  practice  of  education,  427; 
courses  in  the  Scottish  universities, 
427;  love  of  elegant  letters  awak- 
ened, 429;  evening  lectures,  430;  the 
philosophy  of  education  to  be  a  part 
of  our  university  teaching,  431; 
errors  in  the  education  of  children, 
431;  begun  at  the  wrong  end,  432; 
educational  process  should  com- 
mence with  the  culture  of  percep- 
tive powers,  433;  mental  training 
of  boys  in  preparatory  schools,  433 ; 
habits  of  study  acquired  in  school, 
435 ;  study  of  botany,  geology,  and 
mineralogy,  436 ;  the  sciences  of  clas- 
sification, 436 ;  study  of  modern  lan- 
guages, 437 ;  advantages  of  the  course 
of  study  indicated  by  Dr.  Barnard, 
438 ;  the  "  ideal  school,"  as  Dr.  Bar- 
nard describes  it,  439;  clothing  of 
boys,  439;  its  site  in  the  country, 
439;  the  schoolroom,  439 ;  the  work- 
shop, 440;  study  of  the  vegetable 
kingdom,  440;  study  of  trees,  440; 
specimens  gathered,  442 ;  drawing  on 
blackboard,  442;  teacher's  instruc- 
tion illustrated  by  lantern  views, 
444;  same  course  applied  to  the 
animal  kingdom,  443;  elements  of 
experimental  science,  444;  system 
of  learning  begun  without  the  use 
of  printed  aids  produces  earnest 
students  of  books,  444;  how  to  teach 
modern  languages,  445. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  lawyer,  43. 

Ellsworth,  Henry  L.,  62.      [mutes,  71. 

Epee,  Abbe  de  1',  teacher  of  deaf- 
Faculties,  Yale  College,  400. 

Faculties  sent  to  schools  to  examine 
senior  classes  for  admission  to  col- 
lege, 377. 

Field,  David  Dudley,  Timothy,  Mat- 
thew, Cyrus,  and  Stephen  at  Stock- 
bridge,  23. 

Fish,  Hon.  Hamilton,  462. 

Florida,  boundary  commission,  102. 

Freemasonry,  95. 

Gallaudet,  Dr.  Thomas,  founder  of  the 
American  Institution  for  the  Deaf 
and  Dumb,  Hartford,  72. 
2i 


Garland,  Professor  L.  C.,  88. 

Gilliss,  Miss,  sends  Barnard  a  minia- 
ture flag  of  the  Union,  274;  letter 
from  Barnard,  279. 

Gilliss,  Lieutenant,  290. 

Girton  College,  409. 

Goodrich,  Professor,  35. 

Grammar  School,  King's,  313. 

Green,  Bishop,  of  Mississippi,  238. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  316. 

Hardy,  Governor  Sir  Charles,  309. 

Harris,  Rev.  William,  President  of 
Columbia  College,  326. 

Hartford  Grammar  School,  38-41. 

Harper,  Robert,  320. 

Harper,  Joseph  W.,  458. 

Hall,  Dr.  John,  462. 

Harvard  University,  the  astronomical 
observatory,  244;  elective  studies, 
381, 382 ;  system  of  study,  381 ;  Har- 
vard, 386. 

Haynes,  Joseph,  305. 

Herrick,  Edward  L.,  81. 

Hilgard,  Dr.,  letter  from  Barnard, 
236. 

Hill,  Professor,  193. 

Hillyer,  Hon.  Giles  M.,  206. 

Hoffman,  Dean,  462. 

Holbrook,  Josiah,  25. 

Holland,  William  M.,  35. 

Hopkins,  Mark,  at  Stockbridge,  23. 

Hopkins,  Albert,  at  Stockbridge,  23. 

Hopkins,  John  Henry,  at  Stockbridge, 
23. 

Hoppin,  W.  W.,  37. 

Independence  oration  at  Tuskaloosa, 
Fourth  of  July,  1851,  108 ;  birthday 
of  American  liberty,  112  ;  new 
States,  112  ;  Federal  Constitution, 
112 ;  growth  of  republic,  113 ;  popu- 
lation of  United  States,  113;  America 
as  a  leading  power,  115 ;  enemies  of 
the  republic,  116;  hostility  of  the 
South,  117;  slavery  in  the  South, 
118;  tariff  act,  1828-32,  119;  the 
South  dependent  on  the  North  for 
necessaries,  121  ;  the  troubles  be- 
tween North  and  South  not  attribu- 
table to  the  Constitution,  122 ;  wealth 
and  industry,  124;  manufacturing 
and  non-manufacturing  peoples,  126 ; 
legislation,  127;  an  agricultural 
community,  128;  the  South  buying 
from  the  North,  129;  economical 


482 


INDEX 


distribution  of  labor,  131;  British 
trade  and  import  duties,  132;  im- 
portation of  machinery  and  skilled 
workmen,  134;  advantages  of  adopt- 
ing such  a  policy,  135 ;  unstableness 
of  riches  in  the  South,  136 ;  a  word 
of  warning  against  separation,  137. 

Johnson,  Rev.  Mr.,  193. 

Johnson,  William,  310. 

Johuson,  Dr.,  of  Hartford,  303. 

Johnson,  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel,  President 
of  King's  College,  304 ;  resigns  the 
presidency,  312. 

Johnson,  William  Samuel,  President 
of  Columbia  College,  321. 

Johnson's  Cyclopaedia,  449. 

Kane,  Judge  J.  K.,  241. 

Kennedy,  Archibald,  305. 

Kent,  James,  Professor  of  Law,  Co- 
lumbia College,  322,  328. 

King,  Dr.  Charles,  President  of  Co- 
lumbia College,  298,  331. 

Kingsley,  Professor,  35. 

KING'S  COLLEGE,  sketch  of  the  history 
of,  301 ;  first  mention  in  the  records 
of  Trinity  Church,  1703,  302 ;  Bishop 
Berkeley,  302 ;  Cornbury,  Lord-Gov- 
ernor, 302;  Dr.  Johnson  of  Hartford, 
303 ;  an  act  to  raise  money  by  public 
lottery  towards  the  founding  of  a 
college,  1746,  303;  appointing  of 
trustees,  303;  dislike  of  a  church 
establishment,  303;  Johnson,  Dr. 
Samuel,  appointed  President,  304; 
Royal  Charter  granted,  1754,  304; 
first  matriculation  of  students  in 
1754,  304 ;  appointment  of  Governors 
under  the  Royal  Charter,  305 ;  Can- 
terbury, Archbishop  of,  304;  Lord 
Commissioners  of  Trades  and  Plan- 
tations, 304 ;  Lieutenant-Governor 
of  New  York,  304;  Dr.  Johnson's 
letter  to  Bishop  Sherlock,  305 ;  op- 
position to  the  charter,  305;  De 
Lancey,  Lieutenant-Governor,  and 
Mr.  Goldsbrow  Banyer  deliver  the 
charter  to  the  Governors,  1755,  306; 
Trinity  Church  conveys  land  to  the 
corporation  of  King's  College,  306 ; 
the  President  of  King's  College 
should  be  a  member  of  the  Church 
of  England,  306;  dread  of  the  be- 
ginning of  a  church  establishment, 
307 ;  appointment  of  a  Professor  of 
Divinity  of  the  Dutch  Church,  308 ; 


King's  College  seal,  308 ;  foundation 
stone  of  college  buildings  laid,  1756, 
309;  first  commencement,  310;  de- 
grees conferred  at  first  commence- 
ment, 310;  Johnson,  Dr.,  resigns 
the  presidency,  1763,  312;  the  Rev. 
Myles  Cooper  elected  President,  1763, 
312 ;  grant  of  land  in  the  county  of 
Gloucester  and  how  it  was  lost,  312 ; 
grammar  school  established,  1767, 
313 ;  Medical  School  and  foundation 
of  New  York  Hospital,  313;  condi- 
tion of  the  college  in  1773,  314 ;  dis- 
pute between  the  American  colonies 
and  England,  315;  political  contro- 
versies, 316;  the  mob  enters  Dr. 
Cooper's  apartment,  317 ;  Dr.  Cooper 
sails  for  England,  317;  the  Rev. 
Benjamin  Moore  appointed  Prseses 
pro  tempore,  317;  college  buildings 
occupied  by  troops,  317 ;  suspension 
of  King's  College  from  1776  to  1784, 
318. 

Labrador,  Barnard's  account  of  Astro- 
nomical Expedition,  261 ;  sails  from 
New  York,  261 ;  steamer  on  a  reef, 
262;  an  Esquimau  visits  the  ship, 
263;  Domino  Harbor,  263;  fishing 
village  at  Domino,  264;  Barnard 
preaches  to  the  fishermen,  264; 
children  baptized,  264;  Barnard  ac- 
companies fishermen  to  catch  cod, 
265 ;  description  of  village  life,  265 ; 
religious  sentiment  of  inhabitants 
at  Domino,  266 ;  process  of  curing 
fish,  266 ;  bread-stuff  and  vegetables, 
266 ;  burial  of  the  dead,  266 ;  scien- 
tific object  of  expedition,  267 ;  deso- 
lateness  of  the  country,  268;  Coast 
Survey,  268;  Mount  Bache,  268; 
homeward  progress  slow,  268 ;  acci- 
dent to  the  ship,  269 ;  arrival  at  New- 
port, R.  L,  269 ;  reception  of  the  expe- 
dition by  the  American  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  269. 

Lady  Margaret  Hall,  Oxford,  414. 

Laurie,  Professor,  of  the  University 
of  Edinburgh,  428. 

Law's  Letters  to  Bishop  Hoadley,  40. 

Letters  on  College  Government,  143. 

Letter  to  the  President  of  the  United 
States  by  a  Refugee,  291. 

Lieber,  Professor  Francis,  334. 

Lincoln,  elected  President,  271 ;  Presi- 
dent Barnard's  visit  to,  290. 


INDEX 


483 


Lispenard,  Leonard,  305. 

Livingston,  Brockholst,  321. 

Livingston,  William,  305. 

Livingston,  James,  305. 

Livingston,  John,  305. 

Lodge,  Abraham,  305. 

Longstreet,  Hon.  A.  B.,  President  of 

the  University  of  Mississippi,  193, 

198,  200 ;  resigns,  202. 
Lotteries  for  raising  money  for  King's 

College,  303. 

McRae,  Hon.  John  J.,  200,  288. 

McMurray,  Miss  Margaret,  104. 

Manly,  Dr.  Basil,  President  of  the 
University  of  Alabama,  84. 

Martin,  Joseph,  305. 

Marston,  Nathaniel,  305. 

Mason,  Rev.  Dr.  John  M.,  Provost  of 
Columbia  College,  326. 

Masonry,  Barnard's  oration  on  The 
Claims  of  Masonry  to  the  Respect 
and  Veneration  of  Mankind,  95. 

Meek,  Hon.  Judge  A.  B.,  92. 

Meek,  Colonel  S.  M.,  192. 

Meiklejohn,  Professor,  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  St.  Andrews,  428. 

Michigan,  University  of,  386,  415. 

Miller,  Mr.,  editor  of  The  Monitor, 
91. 

Mississippi,  University  of,  197 ;  its  en- 
dowment, 199  ;  commissioner  ap- 
pointed by  the  State,  201 ;  President 
Longstreet  resigns,  202 ;  Open  Letter 
to  the  Board  of  Trustees  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Mississippi,  210 ;  work  of 
a  college,  210 ;  necessity  of  reform, 
211;  first  course  of  study  ending 
with  Bachelor  of  Arts,  and  a  second 
course  ending  with  Master  of  Arts, 
211;  reconstruction  of  undergradu- 
ate course,  211;  post-graduate  de- 
partment, 212;  admission  to  post- 
graduate schools,  212 ;  instruction  in 
post-graduate  schools,  213;  recita- 
tions, 213 ;  post-graduate  schools  to 
have  no  formal  recitations,  314 ;  time 
devoted  to  undergraduate  course, 
214 ;  University  a  Universitas  Scien- 
tiarum,  217;  reply  to  the  objections 
that  "  higher  learning  is  useless,  be- 
cause it  is  not  practical,"  218 ;  science 
of  astronomy,  222 ;  mathematical  cal- 
culations, 228 ;  why  the  State  of  Mis- 
sissippi should  participate  in  educa- 
tion, 230;  the  interests  of  the  people 


of  the  State  promoted  by  the  advance 
of  the  State  University,  232;  noble 
institutions  of  learning  are  evidences 
of  the  true  greatness  of  the  State, 
233 ;  two  years'  progress  under  Chan- 
cellor Barnard,  235;  extract  from 
report  on  Barnard's  retirement, 
258;  ordinance  of  secession,  272; 
students  form  themselves  into  a 
military  company,  277 ;  the  Univer- 
sity Greys,  at  the  seat  of  war,  278 ; 
classes  broken  up  by  the  war,  278 ; 
trustees  refuse  to  accept  Barnard's 
resignation,  279;  University  de- 
serted, 279;  turned  into  a  military 
school,  284. 

Mobile  Register  (The),  Letters  on  Col- 
lege Government,  143-145. 

Moore,  Rev.  Benjamin,  of  King's  Col- 
lege, 317. 

Moore,  the  Right  Rev.  Bishop,  Presi- 
dent of  Columbia  College,  324. 

Moore,  Nathaniel  F.,  328 ;  President  of 
Columbia  College,  331. 

Moore,  C.  C.,  302. 

Morgan,  Christopher,  37. 

Morgan,  Junius  L.,  62. 

Murray,  Joseph,  305. 

Nash,  Stephen  P.,  458,  462. 

Newnham  Hall,  Cambridge,  414. 

Newport,  Rhode  Island,  269. 

New  York  Institution  for  the  Instruc- 
tion of  Deaf  and  Dumb.  76,  97. 

New  York  City  during  the  cholera 
epidemic  in  1832,  77. 

Niles,  John  M.,  62. 

Nicoll,  Benjamin,  305. 

Ogilby,  John  D.,  master  of  Columbia 

Grammar  School,  329. 
Olmstead,  Professor,  34. 
Onderdonk's  Episcopacy  Tested  by 

Scripture,  40. 
Ordronaux,  Dr.  John,  334. 
Oxford,  Miss.,  192. 

Palmer,  William  P.  H.,  at  Stockbridge, 

23. 

Patton,  President,  of  Princeton,  462. 
Peet,  Harvey  Pringle,  76. 
Pegues,  Colonel  A.  H.,  249. 
Pericaris,  Gregory,  83. 
Pettus,  Governor,  272. 
Philipse,  Frederick,  305. 
Polk,  Bishop,  237. 


484 


INDEX 


Porter,  Dr.  Joshua,  Barnard's  grand- 
father, 1, 17. 

Porter,  Augusta,  Barnard's  mother,  1 ; 
her  descendants,  2. 

Porter,  Hon.  Augustus,  Dr.  Barnard's 
brother-in-law,  11. 

Potter,  Horatio  (Bishop),  62. 

Potter,  Eight  Rev.  Bishop,  462;  ex- 
tract from  a  Baccalaureate  sermon 
preached  a  few  weeks  after  Dr. 
Barnard's  death,  470. 

Potter,  President,  of  Hobart,  462. 

Pratt,  Professor,  171. 

Prentice,  George  D.,  editor  of  The  New 
England  Review,  49. 

Presbyterian  College  at  Lagrange, 
203. 

Printing,  Dr.  Barnard's  knowledge  of, 
19. 

QUEEN'S  COLLEGE,  London,  414. 

Randolph,  John,  of  Roanoke,  321. 

Read,  Joseph,  305. 

Rebellion,  war  fever  spreading 
throughout  the  South,  277 ;  Southern 
dioceses  of  the  Episcopal  Church 
and  the  war,  281;  Southern  under- 
estimate of  the  spirit  and  resources 
of  the  North,  282;  Craney  Island, 
James  River,  285;  Barnard's  inter- 
view with  Jefferson  Davis,  286 ;  re- 
sources of  the  North,  289 ;  Barnard's 
Letter  to  the  President,  292. 

Religious  "  Society  "  in  New  England 
village,  3;  the  meeting-house,  3; 
the  pulpit,  4 ;  the  pews,  4 ;  the  gal- 
lery, 5 ;  the  tithing-man,  5 ;  the  ser- 
mon, 5;  the  choir,  6;  the  pitch-pipe, 
6 ;  rebuilding  the  meeting-house,  7 ; 
publishing  the  banns,  8. 

Ren  wick,  James,  328. 

Report  to  modify  the  plan  of  instruc- 
tion in  Alabama  University  by  Dr 
Barnard,  168. 

Report  of  the  Coast  Survey,  243. 

Revolution,  King's  College  occupied  by 
troops,  317. 

Rutgers  Female  College,  409. 

Richard,  Paul,  305. 

Ritzema,  Rev.  Mr.,  307. 

Robinson,  Joseph,  305. 

Salisbury,  Conn.,  1. 
Salisbury  Iron  Works,  27. 
Saratoga  Academy,  17,  22. 
Schermerhorn,  W.  C.,  458,  462. 


Schmidt,  Rev.  Henry  I.,  331. 

Sedgwick.Theodore,  at  Stockbridge,  23. 

Sheffield,  Mass.,  Dr.  Barnard's  birth- 
place, 1 ;  character  of  inhabitants,  2  ; 
and  the  valley  of  the  Housatonic, 
description  of,  2;  a  New  England 
village  at  the  beginning  of  the  cen- 
tury, 3 ;  "  the  stage,"  3 ;  a  New  Eng- 
land parish,  3;  the  meeting-house, 
3 ;  the  pastor,  3 ;  the  pulpit,  4 ;  old- 
fashioned  pews,  4 ;  gallery  of  meet- 
ing-house, 5;  the  sermon,  5;  the 
choir,  6;  the  pitch-pipe,  6;  addi- 
tions to  the  meeting-house,  7 ;  mov- 
ing the  meeting-house,  8 ;  posting  of 
public  notices,  8;  mode  of  publish- 
ing banns  of  marriage,  9;  village 
school,  11. 

Sharkey,  Judge  W.  L.,  288. 

Sherman,  General  W.  T.,  letters  to 
Barnard,  298. 

Sicard,  Abbe,  teacher  of  deaf-mutes, 
71,  72. 

Sigourney,  Mrs.  Lydia  Hunt,  62. 

Silliman,  Professor,  35,  412. 

Slavery  in  the  South,  252. 

Smith,  Hon.  W.  R.,  92. 

Somerville  Hall,  Oxford,  414. 

Southron,  The,  a  literary  monthly 
magazine,  92. 

Special  Responsibilities  and  Oppor- 
tunities of  Educated  Men  as  Citi- 
zens, 244. 

Stafford,  Professor,  171. 

Starr,  Rev.  William,  462. 

Stockbridge  Academy,  the  future  col- 
lege presidents,  Hopkins  and  Barn- 
ard, 23. 

Strong,  William,  37. 

Tellkampf ,  Professor  John  Lewis,  331. 

Temperance,  Sons  of,  106. 

Thompson,  Colonel  Jacob,  193,  200; 
letter  to  Barnard,  258. 

Treadwell,  Mr.,  310. 

Trinity  Church,  302,  306. 

Tuskaloosa,  first  capital  of  Alabama, 
88 ;  state-house  given  to  the  Univer- 
sity of  Mississippi,  89;  removal  of 
the  seat  of  government  to  Mont- 
gomery, 89;  Barnard's  Fourth  of 
July  oration,  1851,  108. 

United  States,  political  excitement  in 
the  South  after  the  Mexican  War, 
108. 


INDEX 


485 


Universities  of  England,  161 ;  govern- 
ing body  of  the  college,  162;  disci- 
pline, 162. 

Van  Amringe,  Professor  J.  H.,  302. 
Van  Bur  en,  John,  37. 
Van  Planck,  Philip,  305. 
Vassar  College,  409. 
Vaysse,  Leon,  76,  79. 
Vinton,  Brigadier-General  Francis  L., 
334. 

Waddell,  Rev.  Dr.,  203;  President  of 

the  Presbyterian  College,  Lagrange, 

202. 

Walton,  William,  305. 
Watts,  John,  305. 
Webb,  President,  College  of  City  of 

New  York,  462. 
Weld,  Mr.  Lewis,  72. 
Wells,  Gideon,  62. 
Wharton,  Dr.,  President  of  Columbia 

College,  323. 


Whittier,  J.  G.,  editor  of   The  New 

England  Review,  50. 
Willis,  Miss  Sarah  P. (Fanny  Fern), 49. 
Willis,  Miss,  52. 
Woolsey,  President  T.  D.,  36. 

Yale  College,  examination  of  Barnard, 
32;  college  examinations,  1824,  31; 
Barnard's  observations  on  the  sys- 
tem of  education  at  Yale,  1824-28, 
33;  debating  and  literary  societies 
in  Barnard's  time,  36;  social  influ- 
ences of  college  life,  37 ;  change  from 
single  tutor  in  all  branches  of  study, 
to  instruction  by  experts,  64;  fac- 
ulty, or  governing  board,  65 ;  ser- 
vices in  college  chapel,  66;  a  case 
of  discipline,  67 ;  law  of  dismission, 
147;  discipline,  147;  method  of  de- 
termining academic  rank,  375;  re- 
port of  the  faculty,  401. 

Young,  Colonel  George,  192. 


CLASSICAL    STUDIES 


IN  HONOUR  OF 


Henry    Drisler 

WITH  PORTRAIT  AND  ILLUSTRATIONS 
8vo.    Cloth,    pp.  viii  +  310.    $4.00,  net. 


CONTENTS 

On  the  meaning  of  nauta  and  viator  in  Horace,  Sat.  I.  5,  11-23.  By  SIDNEY  G. 
ASHMORE.  —  Anaximander  on  the  Prolongation  of  Infancy  in  Man.  By  NICHOLAS 
MURRAY  BUTLER.  —  Of  Two  Passages  in  Euripides'  Medea.  By  MORTIMER 
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By  A.  C.  MERRIAM.  —  Onomatopoetic  Words  in   Latin.      By  H.  T.  PECK.  — 
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SLOANE.  —  Iphigenia  in  Greek   and   French  Tragedy.     By  BENJAMIN  DURYEA 
WOODWARD.  —  Gargettus,  an  Attic  Deme.     By  C.  H.  YOUNG. 


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2 


MUNICIPAL  HOME   RULE 

A  STUDY  IN  ADMINISTRATION 


BY 


FRANK  J.  GOODNOW,  A.M.,  LL.B., 

Professor  of  Administrative  Law  in  Columbia  College;  Author  of 
"  Comparative  Administrative  Law  " 


i2mo.     Cloth,     pp.  xiv  +  238.     $1.50,  net. 


CONTENTS 

Introduction. — American  and  European  Municipal  Government. — The  Public 
Character  of  American  Municipal  Corporations,  and  the  Failure  of  the  Legisla- 
ture to  set  aside  a  Sphere  of  Municipal  Home  Rule. — The  Effect  of  the 
American  System  of  protecting  Private  Rights  upon  the  Attitude  of  the  Legis- 
lature towards  Municipal  Corporations.  —  The  Effects  of  the  American  Law  as 
to  Municipal  Powers  on  the  Attitude  of  the  Legislature  towards  Municipal  Corpo- 
rations. —  The  Constitutional  Limitations  of  the  Power  of  the  Legislature  over 
Municipal  Affairs. — The  Means  of  delimiting  the  Sphere  of  Private  Action  of 
Municipal  Corporations  in  the  American  Law.  —  What  are  Municipal  Affairs 
from  the  Point  of  View  of  the  Liability  of  Municipal  Corporations  for  Torts.  — 
What  are  Municipal  Affairs  from  the  Point  of  View  of  the  Liability  of  Municipal 
Corporations  for  their  Management  of  Property.  —  What  Municipal  Property  is 
protected  by  the  Constitutional  Provisions  protecting  Private  Property.  —  What 
Municipal  Property  is  Subject  to  Alienation.  —  What  is  the  Sphere  of  Private 
Municipal  Action  recognized  by  the  American  Law.  —  European  Methods  of 
distinguishing  and  securing  the  Sphere  of  Municipal  Home  Rule. 


MACMILLAN   &   CO., 

66   FIFTH  AVENUE,        -        -        NEW  YORK. 
3 


FROM  THE  AMERICAN  PRESS 

"  It  is  a  careful  and  thorough  study  of  the  problem  which  will  merit  the  attention  ol 
legislators  and  students."  —  Springfield  Republican. 

"  Professor  Goodnow's  is  a  work  which  all  who  have  an  interest  in  this  subject  .  .  . 
could  profitably  read."  —  Philadelphia  Evening  Telegraph. 

"  This  work  is  a  carefully  prepared  and  suggestive  one."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

"  Professor  Goodnow  has  put  into  his  compact  little  volume  a  great  quantity  of  informa- 
tion that  will  be  found  valuable  by  students  of  municipal  law  and  politics  and  by  lawyers 
generally.  .  .  .  His  work  will  serve  to  open  many  lines  of  thought  on  municipal  adminis- 
tration that  cannot  fail  to  produce  good  results."  —  New  York  Times. 

"  Should  find  a  place  in  the  library  of  all  students  of  the  municipal  problem  as  a 
valuable  book."  —  The  Outlook. 

"  A  fresh,  able,  and  logical  discussion  of  a  subject  to  which  but  little  attention  has 
hitherto  been  paid."  —  Boston  Record. 

"  To  a  correct  understanding  of  the  problem  of  municipal  reform  in  all  its  bearings 
Professor  Goodnow's  book  is  really  indispensable."  —  Boston  Beacon. 

"  Here  is  without  doubt  one  of  the  most  trenchant  and  scholarly  contributions  to  politi- 
cal science  of  recent  writing,  remarkable  for  analytical  power  and  lucidity  of  statement."  — 
Chicago  Evening  Post. 

"  It  would  be  a  most  excellent  thing  if  this  book  were  included  in  the  curriculum  of  our 
public  schools."  —  Chicago  Journal. 

"  A  timely  work  and  one  of  unmistakable  significance  and  utility  as  well  as  erudition." 
—  Milwaukee  Sentinel. 

"  Cannot  fail  of  a  wide  and  favorable  reception."  —  Albany  Law  Journal. 

"  A  thoroughly  good  book  and  withal  a  very  timely  book  ...  a  fair,  candid,  historic 
treatment  of  a  difficult  problem."  —  New  York  Herald. 


FROM  THE  ENGLISH  PRESS 

"  The  treatise  is  carefully  written.  It  will  be  of  utility  in  America  as  a  guide  to  munici- 
pal law,  while  for  the  world  at  large  it  is  a  valuable  contribution  to  the  literature  of  com- 
parative jurisprudence."  —  Manchester  Guardian. 

"  Mr.  Goodnow's  book  should  be  a  useful  stimulus  to  his  own  countrymen,  and  to 
British  readers  it  can  be  commended  as  a  clear  and  interesting  account  of  some  of  the 
most  important  and  to  us  the  most  obscure  of  American  institutions."  —  Glasgow  Herald. 

"  We  question  if  any  other  book  before  has  achieved  quite  the  important  service  to 
what  may  be  termed  theoretic  municipalism.  .  .  .  One  that  all  those  interested  in  munici- 
pal matters  should  read.  .  .  .  Moderate  in  tone,  sound  in  argument,  and  impartial  in  its 
conclusions,  it  is  a  work  that  deserves  to  carry  weight."  —  London  Liberal. 

"A  valuable  contribution  to  the  literature  of  local  government."  —  London  Surveyor. 

"As  a  study  in  comparative  local  government  ...  of  interest  and  importance."  — 
Edinburgh  Scotsman. 


MACMILLAN    &   CO., 

66    FIFTH    AVENUE,        •       -        NEW  YORK, 
4 


SCIENCE  OF  STATISTICS,  PART  I 

STATISTICS  AND  SOCIOLOGY 

By  RICHMOND  MAYO-SMITH,  Ph.D., 

Professor  of  Political  Economy  and  Social  Science  in  Columbia  College 

8vo.     Cloth,     pp.  xvi  +  399.     $3.00,  net. 


Sociology  is  the  science  which  treats  of  social  organization.  It  has  for  object  of 
research  the  laws  which  seem  to  underlie  the  relations  of  men  in  society.  It  studies  social 
phenomena.  But  the  sociologist  meets  two  great  difficulties ;  one  is  the  enormous  number 
and  complexity  of  these  social  phenomena,  and  the  second  is  the  lack  of  any  precise 
means  of  measuring  or  gauging  social  forces.  History  and  observation  give  us  general 
knowledge  of  these  phenomena.  In  some  directions  one  can  reach  quantitative  measure- 
ments in  addition  to  mere  qualitative  description.  This  is  done  by  means  of  statistics. 
The  science  of  Statistics  is  therefore  one  of  the  most  important  instruments  of  investiga- 
tion in  Sociology. 

The  object  of  this  book  is  to  show  how  Statistics  should  be  used  by  the  sociologist  and 
to  give  some  of  the  results  thus  far  attained.  In  each  chapter  special'emphasis  is  laid  on 
the  right  use  of  the  method,  and  the  ordinary  fallacies  and  misuse  of  statistics  are  care- 
fully pointed  out.  The  object  is  to  furnish  the  student  of  sociology  and  the  general  reader 
with  the  most  interesting  facts  and  at  the  same  time  to  make  him  competent  to  judge  of 
the  value  of  the  evidence. 

The  material  gathered  in  this  volume  is  all  included  under  Population  Statistics.  It 
deals  with  the  classification  of  population  according  to  sex,  age,  and  conjugal  condition, 
with  births,  marriages,  deaths,  sickness,  and  mortality;  the  social  condition  of  the  com- 
munity is  considered  under  the  statistics  of  families,  dwellings,  education,  religious  confes- 
sion, infirmities,  suicide,  and  crime;  ethnographic  problems  are  dealt  with  under  race  and 
nationality,  migration,  population  and  land  (physical  environment),  and  population  and 
civilization  (social  environment).  The  causes  affecting  each  phenomenon,  e.g.  scarcity  of 
food,  and  crime,  are  carefully  considered  in  each  case. 

The  author  has  utilized  the  material  furnished  by  the  recent  American  and  European 
censuses  of  1890  and  1891  which  has  just  become  accessible.  This  material  will  not  be 
superseded  for  ten  years  at  least.  For  current  statistics  such  as  births,  marriages,  and 
deaths  he  has  used  the  averages  for  the  decade  1880-90  as  being  typical  rather  than  the 
figures  for  a  single  year.  While  the  book  is  not  a  manual  of  statistics  in  the  ordinary 
sense,  it  contains  all  the  important  facts  about  population  critically  arranged  and  analyzed. 
The  reader  is  not  sent  adrift  among  a  lot  of  tables,  but  the  relation  of  the  facts  to  each 
other  is  carefully  observed.  At  the  same  time  a  topical  index  makes  the  book  useful  as  a 
dictionary  of  population  statistics. 

The  present  volume  is  issued  as  Part  I.  of  a  systematic  Science  of  Statistics,  and  is 
intended  to  cover  what  is  ordinarily  termed  Population  Statistics.  The  author  has  in 
preparation  Part  II.,  Statistics  and  Economics,  which  will  cover  the  statistics  of  commerce, 
trade,  finance,  and  economic  social  life  generally. 

CONTENTS 

Introduction.  Statistics  in  the  Service  of  Sociology.  —  The  Criteria  of  Statistics.  —  Method 
of  Study.  Book  I.  Demographic.  Sex,  Age,  and  Conjugal  Condition.  — Births. — 
Marriages.— Deaths.  — Sickness  and  Mortality.  Book  II.  Social.  Social  Condition 
(Families  and  dwellings,  education,  religious  confession,  and  occupations).  —  The  Infirm 
and  Dependent  — Suicide.  — Crime.  Book  III.  Ethnographic.  Race  and  Nation- 
ality.—Migration.  Book  IV.  Government.  Population  and  Land  (Physical  Environ- 
ment) .  —  Population  and  Civilization  (Social  Environment) .  Index  by  Topics.  Index 
by  Countries. 

MACMILLAN   &   CO., 

66    FIFTH    AVENUE,        -        -        NEW  YORK. 

5 


FROM  THE  PRESS 

"  Professor  Mayo-Smith's  long  expected  work  on  statistics  is  sure  to  take  front  rank 
in  the  literature  of  the  subject  in  the  English  language.  It  is  not  a  book  of  statistical 
references,  but  is  rather  a  work  devoted  to  the  interpretation  of  statistical  data.  .  .  .  The 
success  which  greeted  Professor  Mayo-Smith's  earlier  sketch,  '  Statistics  and  Economics,' 
will  doubtless  be  accorded  in  still  greater  measure  to  his  more  ambitious  effort.  The  situ- 
ation of  our  statistical  literature  is  such  that  even  a  poor  performance  in  this  field  would 
be  of  importance.  A  work  which  has  the  scholarly  character  of  the  present  volume  can 
count  upon  an  assured  success."  —  Annals  of  the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social 
Science, 

"  It  embodies  the  conclusions  of  a  pioneer  in  the  field,  who  has  been  lecturing  on  sta- 
tistics for  a  dozen  years  at  Columbia  College,  and  who,  by  his  teaching  and  influence,  has 
contributed  to  arouse  an  enlightened  interest  in  the  subject.  This  work  will  extend  and 
deepen  that  interest  among  students  of  affairs ;  and  by  providing  a  text-book,  which  might 
be  used  for  a  class  either  with  or  without  supplementary  lectures,  it  should  make  the 
introduction  of  the  subject  into  the  curricula  of  other  institutions  possible.  This  volume 
contains  the  only  full  statement  in  the  English  language  of  the  general  principles  and  con- 
clusions of  statistics,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  congratulation  that  an  American  scholar  should 
be  the  first  to  offer  such  a  work  to  the  public." —  The  Educational  Review. 

"  An  exceedingly  useful  work.  .  .  .  From  a  vast  range  of  reliable  sources  Professor 
Mayo-Smith,  an  expert  in  statistical  methods,  has  brought  together  a  mass  of  ordered 
materials  which  bear  on  social  problems ;  and  students  of  sociology  are  deeply  his  debtors. 
Many  vague  notions  and  insecure  theories  will  be  tested  by  the  yard-stick  of  this  book, 
and  no  serious  workers  can  afford  to  ignore  it.  ...  It  is  a  distinct  merit  of  the  work  that 
the  data  compiled  are  arranged  in  a  way  to  excite  interest  and  lead  to  results."  —  The  Dial. 

"  No  more  important  work  bearing  on  the  subject  of  social  science  has  been  issued 
recently.  In  1890  and  1891  full  and  complete  censuses  were  taken  in  the  United  States, 
England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  Germany,  France,  Austria,  and  India,  and  Professor  Mayo- 
Smith  has  availed  himself  of  the  results  of  these  to  present  in  intelligible  and  scientific 
form  such  of  the  statistics  as  bear  directly  upon  the  most  important  and  vital  sociological 
and  economical  questions  of  the  day,  which  are  pressing  themselves  home  not  only  upon 
students,  sociologists,  and  publicists,  but  upon  intelligent  men  generally.  ...  In  brief,  the 
book  may  be  accepted  as  an  authority,  and  its  value,  filling  a  place  too  long  vacant  in  the 
literature  of  sociological  science,  is  not  easily  exaggerated."  —  Boston  Daily  Advertiser. 

"  Far  from  being  an  arid  text-book,  these  statistical  facts  are  so  systematically  arranged 
and  presented,  with  such  ingenious  and  instructive  comment,  as  to  furnish  in  small  com- 
pass a  vast  magazine  of  curious  facts  with  no  little  interesting  reading,  at  least  to  any  one 
taking  the  slightest  interest  in  sociology.  The  indexing  cannot  be  too  highly  commended, 
rendering,  as  it  does,  a  wide  range  of  statistics  instantly  available." —  The  Milwaukee 
Sentinel. 

"  The  work  is  a  novelty  in  American  literature,  nothing  of  the  kind  ever  having  been 
before  issued.  It  is  also  a  model  of  method  and  ought  to  be  as  safe  a  guide  as  the  mari- 
ner's compass  has  been  to  the  navigator  in  the  past.  .  .  .  While  the  author  has  published 
a  text-book  for  the  student  and  a  guide  for  the  statistician,  he  has  also  issued  a  very  inter- 
esting work  for  common  perusal."  —  The  Detroit  Tribune. 


MACMILLAN   &   CO., 

66    FIFTH    AVENUE,        -        -        NEW  YORK. 

6 


ATLAS 

OF  THE 

FERTILIZATION  AND  KARYOKINESIS 
OF  THE  OVUM 

By  EDMUND   B.  WILSON,  Ph.D., 

Professor  of  Invertebrate  Zoology  in  Columbia  College 

WITH  THE  CO-OPERATION  OF 

EDWARD  LEAMING,  M.D.,  P.R.P.S., 
Instructor  in  Photography  at  the  College  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons,  Columbia  Collegt 

WITH  TEN  PHOTOGRAPHIC  PLATES  AND   NUMEROUS  DIAGRAMS 

Extra  8vo.    Cloth,    pp.  vii  +  32.    $4.00,  net. 


This  work  comprises  forty  figures,  photographed  from  nature  by  Dr.  Learning  from  the 
preparations  of  Professor  Wilson  at  an  enlargement  of  one  thousand  diameters,  and 
mechanically  reproduced  by  the  gelatine  process,  without  retouching,  by  Edward  Bierstadt 
of  New  York.  The  plates  are  accompanied  by  an  explanatory  text,  giving  a  general  intro- 
duction to  the  subject  for  the  use  of  students  and  general  readers,  a  detailed  description 
of  the  photographs,  and  over  sixty  text-figures  from  camera-drawings. 

It  is  the  object  of  this  atlas  to  place  before  students  and  teachers  of  biology  a  practically 
continuous  series  of  figures  photographed  directly  from  nature,  to  illustrate  the  principal 
phenomena  in  the  fertilization  and  early  development  of  the  animal  egg.  The  new  science 
of  cytology  has  in  the  course  of  the  past  two  decades  brought  forward  discoveries  relating 
to  the  fertilization  of  the  egg  and  the  closely  related  subject  of  cell-division  (karyokinesis) 
that  have  called  forth  on  the  part  of  Weismann  and  others  some  of  the  most  important 
and  suggestive  discussions  of  the  post-Darwinian  biology.  These  discoveries  must  in 
some  measure  be  dealt  with  by  every  modern  text-book  of  morphology  or  physiology,  yet 
they  belong  to  a  region  of  observation  inaccessible  to  the  general  reader  or  student,  since 
it  can  only  be  approached  by  means  of  a  refined  histological  technique  applied  to  special 
objects  not  ordinarily  available  for  practical  study  or  demonstration.  A  knowledge  of  the 
subject  must  therefore,  in  most  cases,  be  acquired  from  text-books  in  which  drawings  are 
made  to  take  the  place  of  the  real  object.  But  no  drawing,  however  excellent,  can  convey 
an  accurate  mental  picture  of  the  real  object.  It  is  extremely  difficult  for  even  the  most 
skilful  draughtsman  to  represent  in  a  drawing  the  exact  appearance  of  protoplasm  and  the 
delicate  and  complicated  apparatus  of  the  cell.  It  is  impossible  adequately  to  reproduce 
the  drawing  in  a  black-and-white  text-book  figure.  Every  such  figure  must  necessarily  be  in 
some  measure  schematic  and  embodies  a  considerable  subjective  element  of  interpretation. 

The  photograph,  whatever  be  its  shortcomings  (and  no  photograph  can  do  full  justice 
to  nature),  at  least  gives  an  absolutely  faithful  representation  of  what  appears  under  the 
microscope ;  it  contains  no  subjective  element  save  that  involved  in  the  focussing  of  the 
instrument,  and  hence  conveys  a  true  mental  picture.  It  is  hoped,  therefore,  that  the  pres- 
ent work  may  serve,  a  useful  purpose,  especially  by  enabling  teachers  of  biology  to  place 

7 


before  their  students  a  series  of  illustrations  whose  fidelity  is  beyond  question,  and  which 
may  serve  as  a  basis  for  either  elementary  or  advanced  work  in  this  direction. 

Following  is  a  partial  list  of  the  points  clearly  shown  in  the  present  series:  The 
ovarian  egg,  with  germinal  vesicle,  germinal  spot  and  chromatin-network ;  the  polar 
amphiaster  with  the  "  Vierergruppen  "  or  quadruple  chromosome-groups ;  the  unfertilized 
egg,  after  extrusion  of  the  polar  bodies;  entrance  of  the  spermatozoon,  the  entrance-cone; 
rotation  of  the  sperm-head,  origin  of  the  sperm-aster  from  the  middle-piece,  growth  of  the 
astral  rays;  conjugation  of  the  germ-nuclei,  extension  and  division  of  the  sperm-aster; 
formation  of  the  cleavage-nucleus ;  the  attraction-spheres  in  the  resting-cell ;  formation  of 
the  cleavage-amphiaster,  origin  of  the  spindle-fibres  and  chromosomes ;  division  of  the 
chromosomes,  separation  of  the  daughter-chromosomes;  structure  and  growth  of  the 
astrosphere ;  degeneration  of  the  spindle ;  formation  of  the  "  Zwischenkorper  " ;  origin  of 
the  chromatic  vesicles  from  the  chromosomes ;  reconstruction  of  the  daughter-nuclei ; 
cleavage  of  the  ovum ;  the  two-celled  stage  at  several  periods  showing  division  of  the 
archoplasm-mass, "  attraction-spheres  "  in  the  resting-cell,  formation  of  the  second  cleavage- 
amphiasters. 


FROM  THE  PRESS 

"  A  work  which  is  an  honor  to  American  scholarship."  —  Philadelphia  Evening  Tele- 
graph. 

"  Professor  Wilson  has  rendered  a  great  service  to  teachers  and  students  in  the  publica- 
tion of  the  splendid  series  of  micro-photographs  of  these  different  processes.  These  are 
accompanied  by  an  admirably  lucid  text."  —  The  Dial. 

"  It  is  not  often  that  one  is  permitted  to  examine  a  piece  of  work  which  is  done,  in  all 
respects,  on  an  ideal  standard,  as  this  is.  ...  It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  whole  area  engaged 
in  the  fertilization  and  division  of  the  ovum  has  never  been  shown  or  the  forces  traced 
with  such  precision  before." —  The  Independent. 

"  Every  biologist  owes  the  greatest  gratitude  to  the  authors  and  publishers  of  this 
beautiful  volume;  and  only  those  who  have  labored  themselves  to  make  good  photo- 
graphic plates  from  specimens  exhibiting  karyokinesis,  can  appreciate  the  wonderful 
delicacy  of  the  results."  —  Natural  Science. 

"  This  work  is  of  a  very  high  order,  and  both  by  its  merit  and  its  opportuneness  is  a 
noteworthy  contribution  to  science.  .  .  .  The  pictures  obtained  represent  the  highest 
perfection  of  micro-photography  yet  reached,  especially  as  applied  to  protoplasmic  struct- 
ures. ...  To  the  whole  is  prefixed  an  abundantly  illustrated  "General  Introduction" 
in  which  Professor  Wilson  gives  a  summary  of  our  present  knowledge  of  our  history  of 
the  ovum,  so  far  as  it  has  any  bearing  on  the  problems  of  fertilization.  It  would  be  very 
difficult  to  surpass  this  introduction,  owing  to  its  felicitous  combination  of  terseness, 
clearness,  and  completeness.  The  work  takes  its  place  at  once  as  a  classic,  and  is  certainly 
one  of  the  most  notable  productions  of  pure  science  which  have  appeared  in  America. 
It  will  be  valuable  to  every  biologist,  be  he  botanist  or  zoologist,  be  he  investigator  or 
teacher."  —  Science. 


MACMILLAN   &  CO., 

FIFTH    AVENUE,        -        -        NEW  YORK. 
8 


JUST  READY 

AN  ATLAS  OF  NERVE  CELLS 

BY 

M.  ALLEN  STARR,  M.D.,  Ph.D., 

Professor  of  Diseases  of  the  Mind  and  Nervous  System,  College  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons, 

Medical  Department  of  Columbia  College  ;   Consulting  Neurologist  to  the  Presbyterian 

and  Orthopedic  Hospitals,  and  to  the  New  York  Eye  and  Ear  Infirmary 

WITH  THE  CO-OPERATION  OF 

0.  S.  STRONG,  Ph.D.,  and  EDWARD  LEAMING,  M.D. 
Extra  4to.    Cloth.    $10.00,  net. 

UNIFORM  WITH  DR.  WILSON'S  "  ATLAS  OF  THE  FERTILIZATION  OF  THE  OVUM  " 

52  PLATES.      8  FIGURES. 


It  is  the  object  of  this  atlas  to  present  to  students  and  teachers  of  histology  a  series  of 
photographs  showing  the  appearance  of  the  cells  which  form  the  central  nervous  system, 
as  seen  under  the  microscope.  These  photographs  have  been  made  possible  by  the  use 
of  the  method  of  staining  invented  by  Professor  Camillo  Golgi  of  Turin.  This  method 
has  revealed  many  facts  hitherto  unknown,  and  has  given  a  conception  of  the  structure  and 
connections  of  the  nerve  cells  both  novel  and  important. 

In  the  most  recent  text-books  of  neurology  and  in  the  atlas  of  Golgi  these  facts  have 
been  shown  by  drawings  and  diagrams.  But  all  such  drawings  are  necessarily  imperfect 
and  involve  a  personal  element  of  interpretation.  It  has  seemed  to  me,  therefore,  that  a 
series  of  photographs  presenting  the  actual  appearance  of  neurons  under  the  microscope 
would  be  not  only  of  interest  but  also  of  service  to  students.  The  Golgi  method  lends 
itself  very  readily  to  the  photographic  process,  for  the  cell,  with  its  dendrites  and  neuraxon, 
is  stained  black  upon  a  light  yellowish  ground,  and  thus  is  capable  of  giving  a  sharp  pict- 
ure. In  the  preparation  of  this  Atlas  I  have  had  the  co-operation  of  Dr.  O.  S.  Strong,  who 
has  cut  and  stained  the  specimens,  and  of  Dr.  Edward  Learning,  whose  skill  in  photogra- 
phy has  made  this  work  possible.  Dr.  Strong  has  been  able  to  produce  remarkably  suc- 
cessful sections  of  the  various  parts  of  the  nervous  system,  both  brain  and  spinal  cord,  and 
has  made  some  valuable  modifications  of  Golgi's  methods.  He  has  contributed  a  section 
upon  the  technique,  containing  many  original  and  important  suggesiions.  In  the  art  of 
photographing  microscopic  specimens  Dr.  Learning  has  been  particularly  successful.  It 
can  be  readily  imagined  that  the  difficulties  of  obtaining  a  clear  picture  focussed  in  one 
plane  upon  the  photographic  plate  are  at  times  almost  insuperable,  the  microscopist 
ordinarily  bringing  various  planes  into  his  vision  by  the  aid  of  the  fine  adjusting  screw  of 
the  instrument.  By  care  in  the  selection  of  specimens,  by  ingenious  contrivances  to 
ensure  a  perfect  focussing,  and  by  the  use  of  various  methods  adapted  to  each  emergency, 
Dr.  Learning  has  succeeded  where  others  have  failed.  He  has  contributed  a  section  of 
much  value  upon  the  photographic  technique.  The  photographs  have  been  reproduced 
in  a  painstaking  manner  by  Mr.  Edward  Bierstadt,  whose  process  of  autotyping  has  been 
selected  after  a  careful  comparison  with  other  methods  of  reproduction ;  and  it  can  be 
justly  said  that  they  show  every  detail  of  the  original  photographs. 

In  presenting  this  Atlas  I  have  not  attempted  to  write  an  exhaustive  account  of  nervous 
histology,  but  rather  to  present  a  brief  review  of  the  essential  facts  so  far  as  they  can  be 
seen  by  the  aid  of  the  Golgi  stain,  and  to  show  how  these  facts  aid  in  the  knowledge  of 
nervous  action.  I  may  be  permitted,  however,  to  point  out  that  this  atlas  is  based  mainly 
upon  preparations  from  the  human  nervous  system  ;  that  it  not  only  includes  the  spinal 
cord,  cerebellum,  and  brain  cortex,  which  have  been  studied  by  Golgi,  Cajal,  Van  Gehuch- 
ten,  Retzius,  and  Lenhossek,  but  also  presents  original  studies  of  the  corpora  quadrigemina, 
optic  thalamus,  and  lenticular  and  caudate  nuclei,  and  is  thus  quite  complete  in  its  scope. 
It  is  my  intention  at  some  future  time  to  issue  another  volume  which  will  include  the 
peripheral  nerves  and  their  terminations  and  the  organs  of  sense. 


MACMILLAN    &    CO., 

66    FIFTH    AVENUE,  -        NEW  YORK. 

9 


JUST  READY 

THE 

PRINCIPLES  OF  SOCIOLOGY 


BY 


FRANKLIN   HENRY    GIDDINGS,  M.A., 

Professor  of  Sociology  in  Columbia  College 

8vo.     Cloth,     pp.  xvi  +  476.    $3.00,  net. 


This  work  is  primarily  a  contribution  to  the  theoretical  organization  of  sociology, 
but  it  is  an  outgrowth  of  actual  university  instruction  and  has  been  written  with  especial 
reference  to  the  needs  of  university  students.  It  differs  from  previous  treatises  on 
sociology  in  two  important  respects :  first,  in  its  account  of  the  differentiation  of  social 
phenomena  from  phenomena  of  all  other  kinds ;  second,  in  its  exclusion  of  topics  that 
are  properly  economic  or  political  rather  than  sociological.  The  entirely  just  criticism 
has  been  passed  upon  sociological  theory  as  heretofore  stated,  that  it  has  lacked  unity. 
While  political  economy  has  worked  out  a  consistent  theory  by  studying  the  consequences 
that  follow  from  a  single  trait  of  human  nature,  namely,  the  desire  for  wealth,  abstrac- 
tion being  made  for  the  time  of  all  other  motives,  sociology,  without  a  guiding  principle 
of  its  own,  has  attempted  to  piece  together  the  results  of  many  sciences  of  man  and  his 
relations.  Professor  Giddings  attempts  to  supply  the  guiding  principle.  He  discovers  in 
one  particular  state  of  consciousness,  which  is  coextensive  with  potential  society  and  with 
nothing  else,  the  true  cause  of  all  distinctively  social  action,  and  deduces  from  it  the 
sociological  laws. 

The  work  consists  of  four  books,  as  follows:  Book  I.,  The  Elements  of  Social 
Theory;  —  Book  II.,  The  Elements  and  Structure  of  Society,  with  four  subdivisions, 
namely:  Part  I.,  The  Social  Population;  Part  II.,  The  Social  Mind;  Part  I II., The  Social 
Composition;  Part  IV.,  The  Social  Constitution;  —  Book  III.,  The  Historical  Evolution 
of  Society,  also  in  four  parts,  treating,  respectively,  of  four  stages  of  progress,  namely: 
Part  I.,  Zoogenic  Association;  Part  II.,  Anthropogenic  Association;  Part  III..  Ethno- 
genic  Association;  Part  IV.,  Demogenic  Association;  —  Book  IV.,  Social  Process,  Law, 
and  Cause.  The  doctrine  of  the  historical  chapters  will  be  that  association  was  the  cause 
of  the  evolution  of  human  qualities  in  the  transition  from  animal  to  man,  and  not  vice 
versa,  and,  in  like  manner,  that  the  dense  populations  of  modern  times  have  been  made 
possible  by  the  civil  form  of  association.  The  fourth  book  deals  with  the  relation  of  voli- 
tion in  society,  and  the  attempt  to  realize  social  ideals,  to  physical  causation  working 
through  natural  selection. 

MACMILLAN  &  CO., 

66    FIFTH   AVENUE,        •        -        NEW   YORK. 
10 


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